


Li Jie Chan

by hopelesspedantic



Series: FDR Millenium College [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Belly Kink, Belly Rubs, Daddy Kink, Digestion, Dom/sub, Food Issues, Food Kink, Light Masochism, Missionary Position, Mommy Kink, Multi, Nausea, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Rough Sex, Stomach Ache, Stuffing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:27:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29926515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopelesspedantic/pseuds/hopelesspedantic
Summary: Li can't seem to fill the emptiness inside him with anything. After the discovery of a gluttonous vice garners him some online attention, he lets it reach unhealthy levels. A new connection motivates him to change his mindset and things heat up quickly, but his simple life gets more complicated.
Series: FDR Millenium College [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2200848
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	1. Desirae's Birthday, October 6th

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Li Jie's roommate dropping out sends him into a depressive spiral, in which he'll do anything to feel seen. His twitch subscribers aren't sure what this means for their usual gaming content as his channel seems to take a turn towards the NSFW, with a whole lot of icing, and a whole lot of Li.

_-click-_

Li sat down at his PC and started Twitch. His mind whirred with the harddrive was the nerves of what he was about to do clashed with the primal desire to do it, and behind it all, the need fueled the conflict. He needed money. He needed validation. Most of all, and most embarrassing to himself, he needed to stream this very minute. 

He usually logged on about now; he was known to start between seven and seven thirty on a Tuesday, usually a mukbang reaction, or a mukbang life muse with chat. Sometimes he played siege and talked about other streamers he hated while his viewers critiqued his strategy and ignored his voice. He needed attention more than anything right now, so he scooted in at his desk, started the stream, and swallowed hard. 

“What’s up guys, it’s Li_Jie_ Wont_Die with another mukbang and chat stream. There’s about a hundred of you right now, so hopefully some more will come in soon.” He glanced over on the desk. “They almost definitely will, once I tell you what I have today.” 

He shifted in his seat and swallowed again, looking back up at the green light. Chat was speculating, but mostly having a side conversation while he wiped his hands on his pants and tried to look straight ahead and be confident. 

“No seige today, and no video, because I’m literally on the edge of a complete breakdown.” Chat dropped question marks and some concurrences as Li looked aside at the desk again. Someone asked what he was looking at, and he quickly continued. 

“My roommate just dropped out, so I basically have this dorm to myself until someone comes along to fill it, but residential management said there’s no one on the waiting list and I’m not first up to be filled, so guess what?” He tried to laugh, but couldn’t. “I’m gonna be even lonelier now. But that’s good for you,” he continued. “Cause it means I’ll probably start streaming more.” He smiled sourly. “At this point, this stream is basically my best friend. The only social interaction I get is reading this chat, and half of you guys don’t even listen to what I’m saying.” The side conversation was interrupted by a few “<3sucks”s and “TT”s and “lmao yeah”s, but the real point of saying this was staring back at him from his desk. 

He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “So since there’s literally no one around and won’t be for pretty much ever, I went outside to campus convenience to just get my mind off of stuff,” he resisted the urge to start getting choked up, and forcefully injected resolve into his voice. “And I picked up this.” he reached onto the table and carefully pulled the flat plastic container into his lap. He held it there and looked at the clear lid with a strange lack of reaction to the finality of announcing it. He recovered his expression and looked at chat. It was mostly disparaging conjecture about how they’d shortly have to stop watching him because he’d either kill himself or do one of those on camera complete mental breakdowns as was common amongst gaming streamer kind, but a few people--and this made his heart glow--seemed excited. 

“I got it for ten dollars, and now I only have $47.86 total to my name. It’s got somebody’s name on it, but I guess they never got it.” He looked up at the stream count, and fifty five more people had joined. Slow day, but it would pick up. “Well, Desirae, this is for you I guess.” 

He cracked off the wobbly plastic top of the container, trying not to touch the icing with the lip, and straightened the Happy Birthday sheet cake on his lap. It had little pink roses on the corners and scalloped white trim around the message to Desirae, but the cake had never been picked up and the campus convenience bakery had just put it up for regular sale. 

He reached up and unclipped his camera for a moment, showing the stream the 12x18 vanilla sheet cake with buttercream icing and airbrushed design. It was the kind of thing you’d see at a twelve year old’s birthday party, that would be cut into too many pieces and make all the kids go insane after twenty minutes. He put back the camera and centered it on his heating face. He knew his viewers at least tolerated mukbang, even if they enjoyed the reaction commentary more, but this wasn’t that at all. This was filling a void. Filling it with cake. 

He put the uncovered cake back on the desk, reached underneath it to the shopping bag and pulled out a plastic fork and knife, along with a two liter bottle of Dasani water. He placed it on the desk, wiped off the loose fork and knife, and scooted into the table. 

“Alright guys,” he said, awkwardly avoiding the green light. “If you don’t like this, log off. If you do, well… enjoy my mental crisis.” He stuck his fork in the cake, pulled off a piece, was momentarily thrown by the miniscule fraction of cake that seemed to detract, then overcame that and put it in his mouth. 

“Ugh!” He choked. “Way too much icing.” 

Chat was still going, and his viewers were up by another hundred. They were at their usual starting numbers, and while some people had dropped insulting messages and left, a lot of people were talking about this current unfolding of events at least pragmatically. Many thought he wouldn’t get through it. Some thought this would be the start of a new leaf in his story, whether this was in their opinion a positive development or a downward spiral varying by degrees. Some people didn’t seem to much mind that he had sat down to eat a sheet cake. They were there for the chat and the banter. 

After swallowing the first bite, he felt the gravity of eating an entire cake start to register. Clearing his throat and taking a swig of water though, he continued determinedly. Chat was bored again, and had taken up another side conversation about Li Jie’s most popular stream in which he vilified another streamer for their seeming narcissistic and creepy attitude, citing a few comments made in a few online games with them. A few days later, they’d been outed as an abuser and a cheater, so Li had gained some subs. 

This topic occupied chat for a few solid minutes while Li ate forkfuls of cake and tried not to let the dawning realization of the absurdity of this hinder him. He’d eaten about two normal size pieces of cake, and felt good. It was tasty, typical cake, and most times he went to a party that had these, he wished he could get two pieces. He started a third, and chat remembered he was there. 

“Lmao he’s just sitting there silently” one person said, and another person demanded that he talk. He swallowed the cake in his mouth and looked up at the light. 

“Honestly, guys, watching chat and eating this cake is probably gonna be my evening. This is chill as hell. Like I said, it’s my breakdown and I get to choose the coping mechanism. If you don’t like it, you could leave.” He ate another piece of cake and drank some water, and someone commented a number of slices. “Woah, for real?” 

Chat affirmed. If he was to finish the whole thing, it would be twenty four three inch by three inch pieces. He looked at the vast amount of remaining dessert and raised his eyebrows. “Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll make it. But that’s not the point. The point is I want to eat some fucking cake, so I’m going to eat some fucking cake, and I’ll stop when I feel like.” He shoved another bite in his mouth and chewed while a bet started organizing itself. 

“10 pcs, $10” 

“I think he’ll get like 4 and then realize what a dumb idea this is” 

“He’s like four now dumbass”

“If he finishes it I’ll literally drop a stack” 

“$10 on 10” 

“You dont know the true power my dude holds” 

“I bet he’ll get 15 at least. I’ve seen chads do some dumb shit, he seems like one” 

Li drank some water and stuck his fork in the cake, commenting before taking a bite. “I’m finishing the fourth one and I think it’s a dumb idea, yeah, but I’m still gonna do it.” He laughed, opening his mouth for the fork. “I’m not a Chad but I’m definitely an idiot.” He took another swig of water to wash down that mouthful. “Still way too much icing, though.” He complained, eyeing the edge pieces with distaste. He started the fifth piece. 

“One row down.” Five more to go. 

“How do you feel?” One person asked, and he looked up, surprised. 

“I feel fine,” He said hesitantly. “I don’t know how much I really like the taste of this anymore though.” He reluctantly stuck his fork into the edge of the cake, pulling off mostly icing and a sliver of bread. The person commented again, complimenting how he looked eating. He blinked. 

“Uh, thanks.” He ate another piece and tried not to think about what he looked like while chewing it. Chat complained that this was going to take forever. Chat speculated about how it would unfold. Li Jie just ate more cake. One person asked him to eat faster, another to eat more. He looked at these comments somewhat confusedly but kept methodically shoving birthday cake in his mouth while people talked about him, amongst other adjacent things. 

“Dude youre gonna regret this” He read the message as it blazed by in another conversation about people’s favorite birthday cake recipes, red velvet, buttercream, chocolate, and/or ice cream. He scooted back in the chair and took a drink of water, pausing briefly to take stock of his options and feelings. 

He wiped his mouth and rubbed his stomach. “I don’t really want more cake, but I also really want more cake. Is that weird?” He sucked on the fork and scraped the stuck on loops of frosting off the tray, forgetting momentarily that he hated the gritty sugar on his tongue. 

He leaned up and pulled off a big piece on the edge, shoving it in his mouth, chewing quickly, and holding his tummy while swallowing. “Second row done.” 

“Madlad” 

“My god he actually might do it” 

“Its only 8 pieces” 

He chuckled. ‘Only eight pieces’, as if any of them would eat eight pieces of birthday cake. 

“God that was so hot” 

He paused. 

“Wtf”

“Wtf”

“Wtf” 

Derision for the comment immediately flooded the chat, but he’d seen the message, and now he was sitting up straight. Four more to go, right? 

He ate the ninth piece more slowly, chewing a long time and swallowing with intentionality, because in his stomach, this was not enjoyable anymore. But in his head, oh yes it was. The tenth piece felt like a prize, after all, people had made bets that he wouldn’t get this far, and while he definitely was more sick of cake than he realized he’d be, he was excited to finish it so he could gloat to chat. 

“Booyah. Ten pieces. I think some of you guys made bets or something, right?” He leaned back again in the chair, holding the water bottle and smirking while the backpedaling and mincing of words began.

“You do this all the time I bet” 

“Nah, you made it look too easy” 

“This some light work for you im not paying until u at least look like u struggled a little” 

“I got played boys”

“This dude is a swindler hes not even eating it you can tell” 

Li Jie sat up and pushed his hair out of his face. “I’m not really eating it? Seriously, how would that even work?” The indignancy escalated, and he felt insulted rather than mildly amused as he usually did at a heckler or a self proclaimed debunker. He stood up all of a sudden, putting his torso in the frame and lifting his shirt. 

“I’m pretty sure I’m eating it.” 

He paused for a second, looking at himself in the camera feed. His frame was pretty average; he didn’t spend a lot of time in the gym these days, since everything had been closed down and he didn’t own his own weights. He didn’t have the desire to work out anyway. So his stomach poked out of his abdomen like a tight little dome. He put a hand on it, and it reacted with a little flinch, but then it settled and he could rub it pretty peacefully, staring slightly entranced at his full-looking belly. It was more than full-looking. It was stuffed. 

A bunch of messages ran through the chat, faster than he could read all of them, but the odd ones he picked out either swept past his eyes as the banal nonsense it was, or struck him with surprise. People were taking screenshots, begging him to take his shirt off, complimenting his body, calling him cute, sexy, and a host of other things he’d never been called in earnest. He sat back down, flushed to his cheekbones and suddenly feeling both very shy, and very not. Most people thought it was weird, some people thought it was fascinating, but some people thought it was hot, and the third group seemed to be a lot louder than the other two. Oh, and he had seven hundred viewers now. 

“Holy hell guys, there’s a lot of people on right now.” 

The chat urged him to eat, the participant number fluctuating as some people seemed to realize that this was not just a sad stream so they could make bets on him while he had a breakdown. But after they said their piece and took their leave, many commenting on the very weird energy in the studio today, there was nothing but bots and people asking him to go back to eating cake. 

He pulled into the desk, settled himself comfortably, and started methodically shoving the cake in his mouth again. He chewed, swallowed, gulped down a little water when the sugar coated the inside of his mouth like sandpaper, and worked through his third row. As the thirteenth piece--first on the fourth row--passed through his mouth and into his stomach, he took a break and pushed away the cake. 

“Ugh, _-urp-_ I don’t feel good anymore guys, I might have to stop.” He glanced at the cake and his own enlarged stomach. “We got about halfway through, and that’s pretty good.” He put his hand to his shirt and pushed up a sugary burp. Chat complained. 

“Yah thats the point” One person said. 

“Keep going, see how far you can get.” 

“Show us your stomach” 

He rolled his chair back. “Oh, uh, right.” He pulled up the front of his shirt and pushed his stomach forward. It was tight, running down the front with his two abdominal muscles, bulging with a few stitches of discomfort on the sides, which he rubbed, pinning the rolled up fabric to his chest. His face screwed up a little with pain, and he forced himself to burp to try and ease some of the aching. 

“See guys? I’m really full, I should--”

His computer dinged with a notification. A little shower of confetti rained in the corner of the screen, as twitch alerted him that someone had paid him ten dollars. 

“You did make it to be fair, and I said I would. This is actually way more entertaining than I expected” was the attached description, yet Li Jie didn’t know what to do. 

“So, um, does this mean I keep going, or… cause like, I don’t the other guy who bet is still here. And I feel kinda sick, so…” 

They donated a cent to speak again. “Keep going. I don’t know what I’ll give you but I’ll give you something if you feel like quitting.” 

Li swallowed and looked at the cake. “Okay.” 

The fourteenth piece didn’t want to go down. He’d said he was done, then kept shoving more cake in his body, and the subversion of expectations was not appreciated. He kept having his esophagus push back when he tried to swallow, and the taste of the cake and the icing was going more towards sand by the mouthful. 

“Mngh.” He grunted, pushing the fork loaded with confection into his mouth again, and struggling to swallow. “Ow.” He put a hand to his stomach, feeling slight resistance to the expansion to admit a fifteenth piece of cake, but the muscles made a way for it to fit inside, and he groaned once he could open his mouth. 

“Didn’t somebody say fifteen?” He asked weakly, chugging the water to help dissuade the lurching in his swollen belly. Fifteen dollars appeared in the stream funds, then five more. 

“I wanted to even it off at thirty” A user called ‘d_m_natsu_jennie_g7’ with a drawn profile picture explained, and Li Jie pulled into the table again, the measly thirty dollars at the forefront of his mind. If he kept going, he hoped, he could rack up at least a hundred. He hoped. 

“Mmnh.” He struggled to take a bite of the sixteenth piece of cake, feeling his belly fighting it and his chewing slowing down as he tried to mash it up and get it down, just so he could finish the row. The last two rows seemed impossible. He was too full. He was two thirds of the way through a sheet cake for crying out loud, and his abdomen was contracting repeatedly, trying to signal for him to stop. Some of the chewed up cake went halfway down his throat, then got launched up into his mouth, and he clamped his hand over it. 

“Hurngh-” He pushed back from the table and gagged. The icing slid back down his throat and hit the contents of his belly with a pang, and he sat back and moaned laboriously, pushing out his stomach and closing his eyes. “Ow,” he mumbled, trying not to look at it. Instead he looked at his viewers. 1.1k people were watching him eat and commenting on his body and his face, which at present was kind of sweaty from the pain and trying to keep everything down. 

“Guys…” He complained, wanting more than ever to never see cake again. Chat encouraged him, and a porn bot posted a picture of some guy without a face sporting a potbelly and solicited visitors. The guy who was donating money was saying in chat that he didn’t realize this kind of thing did it for him. Seeing all the people here helped him enjoy it instead of analyzing why watching Li Jie stuff too much cake in his gut made his heart race. He recommended that Li just try to enjoy eating without framing it in terms of the stream, or being depressed, or the commenters. He’d settled on this coping mechanism for a reason. Just do it. 

So Li Jie pulled the cake off the table, put it in his lap, and ate again. His stomach started to make noise to get the point across, to stop eating. His belly filled with rumbles and panging across it’s stretched diameter as Li shoved forkful after forkful in his mouth. _Ignore the commenters. Ignore the viewer count. Just enjoy this._ He stuffed his mouth with messy, sickly sweet icing, scraping the tray after every edge piece, burping with food in his mouth, regardless of the grossness of it, just trying to get more food in his already stuffed firm belly so he could enjoy what he chose to do. His abdominal muscles finally gave up trying to make him puke it out, and instead, turned their attention to the growing problem of the size of his belly. 

He took a break when sweat beaded under his hair, and pushed both hands into his rock hard gut, sighing and sinking back in the chair. It cramped beneath his hands and he winced, curling forward with agony. He breathlessly held his belly and waited for the pain to subside, nervously rubbing his fingers into his spamming stomach, trying not to make things worse, desperately trying to relieve the muscular kink. 

“Ohhhh.” He moaned, as it finally released, and his tummy somehow stretched again with overdistention. He grabbed the right side of it and tried to give it a shake, but it was too tight to move, and all he did was flinch and moan a little. 

“My stomach…” Nothing he was doing could make his gut stop throbbing. He wrapped his hands around the stuffed mass and squeezed it regretfully, feeling the contents roll and twinge as the sugary mess churned in his hands. He held it for a minute, eyes closed in the chair, when a notification and a message pinged in the corner of the screen. One dollar. 

“Your dick’s up.” Was the only contents of the description, and Li Jie read it, reread it with incredulity, then burst up in the chair, sitting properly with his back upright, his legs together and his tummy poking out over his lap to hide his member. 

The throbbing in his belly was being matched between his thighs. He didn’t have anything to say back to the commenter. He knew what the truth was, the viewers were happily watching it all, and the guy had spent a dollar to remind Li Jie he could enjoy this, though really, he already kind of was. 

After reluctantly polishing off the twentieth piece with a gag, he gripped his raging gut ache, groaned--which was interrupted by a much needed belch--and looked at the last row. 

“I don’t know,” He panted, eyeing it and himself with caution. “I’m so full.” He rubbed his hands across the middle of his belly and pushed his gut against his palm. “You guys, look at me.” 

He pulled back from the table, rolled his shirt up, and turned to the camera. The round bulge of his belly had stretched to become full distention, a round basketball, except it was full of vanilla birthday cake and water, and oh was it upset about that. 

It rolled and kneaded the mass inside it with angry, protesting contractions, physically incapable of processing that much dessert. He tried to belch again, but it smelled like gall, so he quickly closed his mouth and rubbed the sore portion over his belly button, which was burdened with some bubble, or burp, or clump of food, and he could feel it cutting into his waistline. He needed relief. His belly was already forcing its way out of his pants, so he decided to let it free. Hoisting his hard gut up over his wrists, he wedged his fingers down to the button of his jeans and sucked in a breath. Wresting the button loose and then hurriedly pulling down the zipper, he dropped his belly and cried out with both pain and pleasure. His tummy hit his thighs with a slap, and he put both hands on his rapidly growing underbelly, feeling it shift and redistribute with new room.

He anxiously took his fingers off it and gripped the arms of the chair, staring down at his swollen stomach with strange affection despite its sick state. Chat was blowing up. Bots, girls, guys, others, were rushing to say how much they loved his bugle (which one they were referring to was never clarified), rushing to say how much they wanted him to eat more, and rushing to make sexual comments about him. He went red and picked up the fork again, leaving his shirt up, pants open, and his belly exposed to the camera while he started the last row of birthday cake, edge icing and all. His stomach fought like a titan while he mastered it’s protestation and managed to shoved more food inside his engorged organ, then, as the final piece approached and the twenty third square of birthday cake was conquered and disappeared down his gullet, he dropped the fork, and grabbed his belly’s aching girth. Removing his pants band only helped so much. He was way too full to still be eating, way too full for digestion to work properly.

“UUNGH!” He cried, grabbing it’s bulk as it throbbed with pain all around. “UGH, UNH,” He moaned, twisting, clutching the swollen bulges on its sides and above his hips while it panged with distress and sinched with stitches. “My stomach--” He gasped, hugging his upper belly, full of new cake. “Oh,” He rocked a little, as he moved his hand to his underbelly, solid because of the weight on top of it, and the first few pieces trying to get to his intestines. The tray on his lap shifted on his knees. “A cramp. Cramp. I think I got a--” His gut roared with sickness, and his eyes went wide as in spite of everything, his boxers soaked with a bit of precum. 

“What in the hell?” He palmed the raging middle of his belly and sat up straighter, trying to cover the stiff between his legs. He looked down at the big, baffling tummy, rumbling over his thighs, gurgling and shifting the massive weight inside it helplessly as what was now over an hour of indulgence tried to get digested inside overextended organs. 

He moaned quietly, almost too scared to touch it while it lay above his hips and tried to get the food to move. “I have one piece left. An entire sheet cake. Gone.” He swallowed and palmed his midsection. “Inside me.” He pushed a hand on the front where that swelling still was. “Ugh. I can’t even see my dick.” He strained forward and looked down, where his cock was still standing up, a bit revved up. “This is crazy.” He muttered, and sat back again, fumbling around beneath his belly’s intumescence for the fork. “Well, here goes nothing.” 

The fork went into the cake, the cake went into his mouth, the sugar stuck to his teeth, and then his belly took it on with a low, angry gurgle. 

“No reappearances and we just might finish this.” Another bite, and his tummy tried to shift around to make room, but there simply was none, and it communicated this to him with desperate pangs, which he ignored. It was begging him to stop with the birthday cake, but chat was pleading with him to continue, no matter how much pain he appeared to be in and noise came through the mic from his roiling gut. He breathed heavy and went back for the fourth bite, preparing to taste that glob of icing again, and holding his belly’s side while he mashed it up and swallowed it down into his overstuffed stomach. The thing must be stretched to its maximum by now, surely. He couldn't imagine how it let him put the bite in that followed, after showing him in no uncertain terms how full it was. It tried to rumble, all it did was quiver, it was so tight. 

He grit his teeth and grabbed the quaking side. “Ooh-hoo-hoo.” he whined, closing his eyes and leaning to the side, trying to relieve the convulsions inside him. “I’m gonna be sick.” 

The next bite was taken with eerie silence, and the final corner, a little tower of pink icing on a triangle of breading, stared at him. He scraped it off with a fork, put the tray on the floor, and leaned back in the desk chair. He stopped to check chat, but the messages had slowed. He had two thousand viewers. They were waiting, as was he, for him to finish an entire sheet cake in one sitting. He put the fork in his mouth. The icing slid off cleanly, and he tossed the fork onto the tray on the floor, while he spread his legs, balanced his belly, and sat back, slowly mashing up the little bit of cake and masses of icing in between his lips. 

Nothing had made him feel better or worse than this. 

The final bite pushed down his throat with effort, shoving down the bites before it that had been denied entry to his packed stomach, stretching that already stretched mass to it’s final dimensions. It shook him through his core with it’s distress, finally shoving the entire cake down into his full stomach, pushing the contents of his actual dinner deeper into his digestive system, where sugar, processed carbs, and the remnants of the ramen could hash it out inside his small intestine. He grit his teeth and leaned forward, wrapping an arm over his stomach. He couldn’t breathe to talk, and just sat there, jaw clenched, mouth barely open. 

His stomach rippled with indigestion, the distension and the sugar each their own vectors of pain stretching his midriff and his sanity while the relentless onslaught of cramping, panging, and sick groaning went on inside his belly. He panted and tensed, unsure of when it would stop, when he could sit up again, or think about anything else besides his abused insides. His stomach rumbled furiously, and he tried to burp, but the constriction around his middle turned it into a hiccup. He jumped a little, as the hiccup jiggled his body. Immediately, ten dollars came through the notification center. 

“Drink some water” 

Reluctant, but will-less at this point, he reached onto the table, cracked open the lid of the water, and pulled it toward him, careful not to spill it when another hiccup leapt up his throat. 

“Soooooo cute omg” 

He closed his eyes and rocked the bottle back, gulping down water continuously to stop the hiccups before they could jerk up, leaning further and further back in the chair to accommodate the swelling of his belly and the dredges of the bottle. 

He emptied it, threw it on the floor, faced his overhead light, and belched hard. It felt amazing to command his gut like that, pushing it in on itself, forcing gas up and out. He palmed the front carefully and slouched in the chair. 

“That’s it. Two liters of water and a sheet cake.” He rubbed a little circle on the pinkish dome. “In here. Oooh I need to lay down.” He sat forward with difficulty and pulled himself into the desk, still rubbing his belly while he prepared to end the stream. Chat typed messages so fast he couldn’t read them. He clicked through tabs and quickly googled “How do get rid of indigestion fast”, then went back to the stream and was shocked. 

The forty one dollars and one cent was now eighty two dollars and two cents. 

“STAYYYY” was the only description, and he sighed and rolled his eyes. 

“This is really nice of you guys and thank you for the money but I can’t-” 

Ten more dollars. No description. It was from the guy. He burped again and covered his mouth, looking down at his massive stomach, then back up at the camera. 

“But it hurts really bad guys.” He whimpered. “I gotta lay down or I dunno what I’ll do.” 

“Take us with uuu” 

“Can we join? Uwu”

He looked at his bed and then his webcam pinned to his monitor. “I won’t be able to see chat.” 

“It’s ok!!! ^-^ we won’t bother u, just wanna watch” 

“No worries ! Hope you feel better” 

“Its fiiiiine we just luv ur belly” 

He winced as a gurgle deep inside him rocked through his gut and made him burp again. 

“Holy hell, I’m so burpy.” 

“Fuuuuck” was the general consensus in reaction to that comment, and he blushed and pushed his hair in front of his face again, glowing a little on the tips of his ears. He couldn’t deny the fact that his stomach ache was intense, and sitting here deliberating was not conducive to finding relief. He looked at the screen confictedly, his own pale face looking back at him. They really thought he was cute? With the hair he hadn’t cut in eight months? And the lack of muscles? And the queasy pallor on his skin? He rubbed the side of his belly and sighed. 

“I just wanna lay down…” He hiccupped, conflicted. His belly jumped with another little constriction, and he blushed again, patting it to try and calm it’s bubbling down. “Sorry.” He mumbled.

“It’s the sugar.” That one guy commented again. 

“Huh?” He scooted in and scrolled back up to the message. “What do you mean?” 

“The sugar is making you burp. You should probably lay down, your blood sugar levels are about to skyrocket.” 

He muttered the message to himself while he read it, then glanced back at his bed, strewn with clothes, half drunk water bottles, and spiral notebooks. He furrowed his brow and gauged the distance. How many steps was that? He could just scoot there. But could he stand? Didn’t matter. He unclipped the webcam, taking one last look at the rejoicing chat, and slid his desk chair over the mess on his floor to the bed, until the pant legs and jackets stopped the wheels, then took a deep breath, steeled his nerve, and pushed up out of the chair. 

“Woah-ho-ho.” 

He practically fell onto his quilt, and shoved bottles and balled up hoodies aside while he clambered over the edge. He pinned the camera to the headboard with a shaky hand, then slowly sank down on his back, holding the round belly and blinking rapidly. He was so dizzy. His head swam as he rubbed his basketball belly and he winced when it burbled, cupping the underside between the stretched flaps of his pants and trying to calm it’s upset gurgling. 

“Ough.” He grunted, feeling it clench again, trying to see if it would have any luck launching the food out of his mouth. It was too deep down in his system for that now, and he hugged himself, feeling the extra weight on his torso as he rocked side to side slightly, moaning very softly and breathing heavy. His hands did have a light tremble, and his heartbeat seemed slow and laborious. 

“Dizzy…” He mumbled, cupping his sides and shifting higher on the bed to put his shoulders on the pillow. A deep, guttural gurgle worked up through his belly, and the thing rippled and bubbled as he braced himself against the bed and burped loudly. He felt so surfeited and swollen, housing two liters of water and a cake inside his waist. 

“I need to pee.” He mumbled. Gut still gurgling, he rocked up on the bed, swung his legs off the side, and took a deep breath. He ignored the chat messages he could see scrolling by across the room, and lumbered to his feet, sticking his belly out to keep his balance. 

“Oof-” His lower belly resettled and he was made to pass gas. “Ungh.” He hunched over and crossed his dorm, pulling open the bathroom door and shuffling into the water closet. As he pulled down his pants and his boxers to piss, his heart panged and he almost hit the floor. 

“Woah.” He gasped, placing a hand on the wall for balance. His chest was pounding and his vision was blurring. _Holy crap._ He thought to himself. 

After pissing, splashing some cold water on his face, and wobbling back out into his room, he was crippled by another clench in his insides. He folded in the middle of the floor, sinking to the ground, holding his belly. His eyes wanted to close, but he fought for consciousness and laid down, feeling the tremble in his fingers that seemed to get it’s cause from the blood vessels in his wrists. His veins shot pins and needles into his skin. 

He thought this was a bad idea because he might get a stomach ache. He didn’t think it was a bad idea cause he might die of eating too much cake too fast. 

His PC dinged with another alert as someone donated money and sent him a message. 

“Hey Cortana.” He called weakly. The computer chimed. “Read Twitch notification.” 

It chirruped, then began to read slowly, in a robotic voice, “Your blood sugar is high and you're constipated as hell. Just drink more water and don’t go to sleep.” 

He waved his hand and gave a thumbs up. At least someone out there knew what was happening and cared a little bit. 

He struggled to sit up, then gave himself a minute to adjust to the new position, and opened one of the water bottles on his floor, drinking it down slowly and breathing hard. He leaned against the edge of his bed and glanced over at his laptop. He was in frame, which was mostly centered on his bed, but got enough of the floor and wall that he was included. 

Another water bottle found it’s way into his hands and he drank that down slowly too, enjoying the feeling that it was actually helping. The more water he drank, the more ceaseless confusion seemed to pass away from his head, but the more urine he had to pass an hour. He sat there for a while, went to piss again, filled his water bottle at the sink, sat there for a while emptying it, pissed again, filled his water bottle at the sink, and so on, until all that was left of an hour of shoving cake in his mouth was a round belly and a little gas. He stood up, for the first time not feeling like he was going to pass out, and laid back on the bed, letting his belly roll in front of him, heavy and sore. 

“Ahhh.” He sighed. “Thanks, whoever you are.” His computer dinged. “Hey Cortana, read twitch notification.” 

“Thank you, bro. And I’m glad you’re okay.” 

He smiled. “Alright guys, fun’s over. I gotta go to sleep, I have class tomorrow.” He rolled off his bed, unclipped the camera, and replaced it on his monitor, not even bothering to look what chat had to say. 

“Well,” He began, tucking his hair behind his ear and touching his belly lightly. “This was a weird stream. I’ll be back next week for siege and chat like usual. Bye guys. Oh, and uh, happy birthday Desirae.” And it was over. 

He went back and laid on the bed, massaging his belly and staring at the ceiling feeling weirdly happy and satisfied until sleep took him over and he drifted off to a wet dream.


	2. To and from the Max, December 8th

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Li gets a gift from one of his subscribers that manages to fuck him up royally. He tries to get some meds, but finds he can't handle the pain. The kindness of a stranger is the only thing that can bring this to an end, but the agony gets an encore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're wondering how many tricks this pony has, it's one. This chapter might be the same thing three times, because I might be very busy, but I can neither confirm nor deny either claim. Love ya, enjoy, and sorry about the typos.

The microwave beeped. Li picked his head up off the desk and looked over, bleary eyed. He already felt sick, what the hell was he thinking? 

It had been two months since that infamous stream, fondly named “The Desirae’s Birthday Incident of 2020” by his subscribers (of which there were now about sixty or seventy more), and they were not good months. 

He hadn’t meant for this to become a regular thing. He tried to go back to his normal routine, but people who only knew him from that stream didn’t like it. The compromise he came up with was that when he ‘logged off’ at nine, he would stop recording and start making this… other content. People who wanted reaction videos and boba tea would get it at the normal time and then go about their night. People who wanted to see him drink about eight times as much boba tea could get that at ten. 

It was shockingly tiring. It was also shockingly lucrative. On this particular Tuesday, he’d received a package in the mail from a subscriber who cornily named themselves “Maximus” of a lightweight lap sized box, with a note attached. 

“They say ramen never goes bad. Want to test that theory?” 

He opened the box to find six packages of samyang ramen from 2005 in various flavors, two spicy chicken, two spicy chicken and cheese, and two beefy udon, the last of these he had just finished heating up. Now he sat in front of six steaming bowls, exhausted already. 

Getting a killer stomach ache every Tuesday night sounded pretty bad, but to make matters worse they started following him to Wednesday morning, and then all day Wednesday, and then whenever he woke up and the universe said “fuck you”, which was almost daily. He felt lethargic, and was putting on weight faster than he knew he could. 

Ignoring all this, he rubbed his eyes, started his stream with about two hundred viewers, and picked up the first bowl of ramen. He didn’t even say anything during these, he had nothing to talk about, and even less desire to acknowledge what he was doing, even though he thought about it every waking moment, from the time he woke up in pain, to when he went to bed, full, and in still pain. 

He leaned back in the chair, picked up his chopsticks, and took a bite. 

Spongy, a little bit dry, firm to chew, and stale. Great, this was going to be hellish. He must have looked dreading, because a user named Maximus messaged him. 

“What’s your verdict” 

“Ramen does go bad.” Li muttered, slurping up another off color chopstick-full of noodles and wrinkling his nose. “This doesn’t even smell right.” 

He mostly stared at the bot-filled chat and his empty notebook open on his desk while he ate the first bowl of ramen. He liked samyang when it wasn’t a decade and a half old, and eating one bowl of chewy, powdery ramen wasn’t going to ruin his night. Yet. He figured he probably wasn’t going to like the stuff so much when this stream was over. 

He put down the bowl and picked up the next one. 

“Hey Maximus, if you want me to get through this you better pay me. My stomach already feels weird.” 

His notifications chimed with fifty dollars. He smiled and raised his chopsticks in toast. “Cheers bro.” He got halfway through the second bowl, watching the insoluble seasoning packet float around on the top of the water with disgust, when someone paid him another ten dollars. 

“Eat faster.” 

“What? Why?” 

“Speedrun. You’re a gamer” 

Li frowned. “Shut up, man.” He went back to eating the sticky ramen, trying to mix up a clump of spicy chicken seasoning that had turned into a little pebble over the last fifteen years. 

He didn’t know why he refused. It wasn’t like this wasn’t going to suck if he went slowly, and it definitely wasn’t like he respected himself too much. He just felt so done with it already, the thought of hurrying himself toward the inevitable outcome of stomach ache, headache, and chubbier waist was so unappealing. He swallowed the last of the second bowl and took a break to act like the cam-boy he was. 

He’d eaten dinner in the dining hall when it was actually dinner time, so he was full now, and his belly was tightish. He grabbed the front and gave it a shake, turned to the side, poked it out, rubbed it, pinched it, prodded it, the works. He had little heart for anything more, and wasn’t horny at all, and his viewers knew it. 

He ignored the derision in chat, people cussing him out, people creepily asking him to eat differently in overly polite tones, and people fantasizing about his future, be it twenty minutes from now, or twenty months. He put his hand to his stomach and his fist on his chest, and then pushed. The belch freed up some space, and he picked up the third bowl. 

To be honest, the noodles smelled rancid. The flavor pack of these had come with a liquid pack and a powder pack, and the liquid was congealing on the surface like lard in cold water, and the powder didn’t even mix with that, let alone the water. 

He showed it wordlessly to the stream and glared into the camera until money appeared in his total. Then he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and started eating. 

He felt like the opposite of hungry. Not just full, but disgusted by food and the idea of putting it in his body. He judged himself for liking the weight growing in his belly, spongy and salty as it was, and felt himself getting into it as the third bowl passed through his mouth and into his stomach. 

The fourth bowl took some convincing. His stomach muscles were pushing back on the foam in his belly and none of it wanted to mix together, each separate compound trying to scramble away from the others, making his stomach noisy and active. After a bite of the second spicy chicken and cheese bowl, he put it down and put both hands on his belly. 

He took deep breaths, blowing air out of his cheeks and inhaling through his nose, as had become common practice for when he got too full and the first wave of “stop now” protestations started in his gut. He closed his eyes and let his hair fall forward as he massaged the separating layers inside him. The ramen was forming a squishy cement on the bottom, on top of that, the gooey cheese clumps settled in a vat of oil and water, and on the top, spices bubbled up his throat with every small burp to relieve pressure. 

As he resumed eating, every time a new ball of food plunked into this mixture, it started trying to process it like this, pulling down the mass of expired noodles, sifting out the cheese curds, and gurgling under a layer of oily spice. 

He knew he was going to have one hell of a Wednesday morning trying to digest this monstrosity. But he didn’t expect the hell of a Tuesday night that would precede it, until the status quo started to change. 

Lumps of spice dusted cheese amidst stiff tendrils of noodle were sloughing into his growing belly, which was uncomfortable, but then as he reached the last chopstick-fulls of ramen and prepared to drink the broth, a feeling of building pressure started to combat his abs. He quickly knocked his head back and gulped the liquid down, to the pleasure of his viewers, and then set the bowl down and hung his head. 

He felt scared. The ramen wasn’t tasting right, and for all he knew he could be giving himself food poisoning. His stomach was sick, it was sick before he started, but the compounds he’d given it to work with were starting to make it harder to keep a straight face. 

He grit his teeth and palmed the side, where a series of bubbles were pettering up his intestines, and he rolled his head back and groaned. The fat little belly that hung over his lap was getting fatter. He noticed when he inhaled it burbled, and when he exhaled it panged, as if whenever he gave it a bit of room, it grew a bit in size. The oil and water was getting soaked up by the noodles and turning it all into one, gelatinous mass that would not be digested, would not be broken down, and would not be mastered by any steady breathing. 

“This is a bad idea,” he said suddenly. “I’m gonna stop.” He sat forward to pull himself into the table, and clutched his stomach. “Augh!” He shouldn’t have moved. That gelatinous ball of ramen started rolling over, and he froze in place, too shocked by the pain to do a thing. 

His gut rippled through with bubbles, turning the mess inside him into a washing machine of spoiled food. He gripped his stomach and panted, feeling stabbing pains start to jolt in his underbelly, sending his abdominal muscles into spasm. 

“Holy shit.” He muttered, and he pushed away the udon noodles quickly, making room on the desk again for him to put his head down. “Ooooouugh,” He moaned, bouncing his knee and laying his forehead across his arms. 

“This is not good, this is not good. Guys,” He said suddenly, picking his head up and moving to the computer despite the panging in his gut. “I’m gonna end the stream, I think I need to--” He stopped, eyes widening with horror. “I need to...” He bolted from his desk chair and ran to the trash can, tripping and falling on the way, leaving him on his hands and knees between his desk and the trash can by the door, hand to his mouth, belly quaking with gurgles. 

His abs flexed and pulled his hanging stomach up, arching his back, and making him clamp his hand harder over his mouth, as sweat began to bead under his arms. He slowly sat down on the floor, looking down at his stomach, as his viewers watched with slightly morbid fascination, visible burbles, expansions and heaves roiling through him. He pulled his shirt up with a shaking hand. A sickly pallor had come over his skin, clammy with sweat, and warm to his cold hand as he rubbed it with trepidation. 

It wouldn’t stop churning, not even for a second, and he closed his eyes and touched his dick, just wondering, curious if it could make anything out of this. He wasn’t as stuffed as he usually was when he jerked it, but this might do. 

His fingers gently contacted his package through his sweats, and he flicked a bit. There was too much distraction above his hips to get anything going properly below though, because Li Jie’s stomach was starting to liquify. He didn’t know how, he didn’t know why, all he knew was he needed that trash can. He picked it up and hurried back to his seat, placing on the ground between his feet and grabbing the fifth bowl of noodles. 

A chopstick-full of beefy udon went into his belly, and it immediately erupted with a fresh round of gurgling. This was a new type of ramen, and the ingredients that weren’t getting along with themselves, vehemently protested whatever this was. He poked it out and moaned for the camera, feeling his dick wake up as he did it. He ate another bite and panted hard as his stomach, fed up, started contracting around itself, much to the dismay of the food he’d just swallowed, which flung back into his mouth in a hurry. 

“Hungk--” He covered her mouth and flew forward, hanging over the edge of his seat with his legs apart to accommodate his sinking, filling belly. 

After catching his breath and swallowing it down, he sat back up and rubbed down the intumescence of his frame, staring at his reflection in the camera feed, enamored. He wasn’t fat yet; he was trying to get there, but his starting place was kind of far; but sitting there stuffed, legs splayed, kinda hard, kinda sweaty… he could get used to it. He admired his heavy, jiggly belly, his thick, muscular thighs, and his broad chest. If he could’ve saved that moment, he would, to savor the time when he liked himself. If he could stay in it and not experience what happened about five seconds after, oh, he would give anything. 

His stomach grumbled, as it had been doing for a few minutes now nonstop, but he sat up a bit. A jolt of pain shot through his whole frame, he flung himself forward, snatched his trash can off the ground, and groaned long and loud, all of a sudden. His arms wrapped around the trash can and it pressed against his belly, meaning the expansion of that organ affected the way it rested on him. His arms rose and his eyes went wide as something inside him inflated. 

“Uh, unh,” He gasped, and he caught one look at chat and read a message from ‘d_m_natsu_jennie_g7’. 

“Incoming.” 

His guts rolled, his eyes rolled back, and with a force that caused him to almost fall out of his chair, he vomited. He gagged and folded again, squeezing the trash can and shoving his head down in it while his stomach muscles squeezed ramen up his throat. He clutched the side of his gut and belched pitifully, wiping his teary eyes and taking a shaky breath as he sat back. 

“Oh my god.” He muttered, gingerly setting the partially filled trash can back on the floor, still holding the side of his belly carefully. He cut his eyes back up to his camera. “Pay me.” 

Money came into the donations total, some of it attached to conciliatory or congratulatory messages, and one fifty dollar donation from Maximus caught his eye. 

“Finish the udon.” 

He looked at it deadpan, as it was almost too ludicrous to be funny. Another message with a five dollar donation came through the chat. 

“I’m not joking.” 

He picked up the bowl. “Did I laugh?” He shot back, shoving the now cold noodles in his mouth. He’d just puked up a lot of the contents of his stomach as well as like, half a lung, and he felt like shit, so nothing mattered. He devoured the slimy brown pasta, and then picked up the second bowl, ignoring the incredulous pangs from his midsection, threatening to throw it all back out again, watching donations from ecstatic viewers pour in. 

His swollen stomach ached as it quickly distended, sloshing back and forth as he moved around for comfort, just trying to end this goddamn stream already. His belly wobbled over his torso as he sat sideways in the chair, breathing hard and rubbing his side as the sixth and final bowl of ramen made its way into the stomach that had so recently thrown out it’s contents. He was shocked at his own audacity, but his brain was able to master his belly, and after a few questionable burps, he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to puke again tonight. 

His stomach cramps were getting intense, and as the last udon noodle slipped down his throat, he put his feet on the floor, scooted into the desk, and ended the stream without a word, depositing the $346 right into his bank account. He leaned back and held the side of his round belly, as the constriction and discomfort ratcheted to higher and higher degrees.

He needed to take care of it before it got too bad, meaning he needed to head to the pharmacy. Taking a deep breath and heaving himself out of his chair, he waddled out of his dorm, down the empty boys hallway, past the doors of his peers, into the elevator, and out into the parking garage, feeling his belly gurgling with every difficult step. He unlocked his car from across the lot, gritting his teeth and shuffling his feet over the concrete, feeling the weight in his stomach roll and tumble. This hellish night was not over, and he had a feeling it was about to get worse.

* * *

Li rode in absolute silence. The radio cut on as soon as he started the car, but the sound of those chipper hosts and blaring pop beats augmented his discomfort considerably, and he couldn’t turn it off fast enough. He didn’t just have a stomachache, he had a headache. Gaining fifteen pounds in two months wasn’t good for his anything, not his digestion, not his whole chest cavity, not certainly not his brain. Every day he woke up like he’d just been run over, head pounding, chest tight, muscles sore. 

The ramen in his stomach was doing numbers in him by the time he got to Walgreens. He couldn’t make himself go to campus convenience, the idea of seeing someone he knew was too petrifying, so he took those extra seven minutes and went out of his way. He parked roughly and sat there a minute, holding his stomach in his hands and leaning on the steering wheel. Nothing he did could make the excessive, agonizing pain go away. He ate spoiled food. That was the fact of the matter, and no amount of rubbing, massaging, and breathing would make this one subside. 

_Why did I do this?_ He asked himself, as his stomach cramped and complained about not only the salty over indulgence, but the out of date ingredients. _Money._ Was the simple answer. He’d covered his $900 tuition deficit, he bought a chegg account, he bought new shoes, and he even sent his mom a fifty dollar gift card to JCPenny for Mother’s Day that she had greatly appreciated. With actual money in his bank account in case he wanted or needed to make an expense, he definitely felt like he’d partially filled the void in his life. But there was the loneliness still, and ironically at the moment the loneliness was keeping him in the car when he meant to be inside buying something to help himself. 

He needed to open the car door and hobble into the store, but really, the idea of seeing anyone like this was daunting enough that combined with the pain that came from sitting up, he didn’t want to go. Normally when he left his dorm he hoped to see a person, maybe even hold a conversation. That high would fuel him for at least two days, and then he’d be sad again and wish it was time to stream so he could talk to someone. His stomach ache made talking a difficulty, and having to mime or stutter was… no. 

He leaned on the car door and slowly turned to the side, both hands on his stomach squirming inside his t-shirt. The knowledge that there was nothing he could do to stop it besides medication eventually made him sit up, take a deep breath, and open the door. Cold December air blew in and he hunched over, shivering, but swung his legs out onto the pavement, tucking a surgical mask over his ears. The white parking line stared back at him and he shut his eyes, wrapping both arms around his squelching stomach and holding himself there until the stabbing pain in his chest said _get up now._ He wasn’t sure what that was about, but it made him want medication even more, so he stood, shut the car door, and walked up onto the curb, slightly bent over, and breathing heavily. 

Shuffling through the sliding plexiglass doors, he flinched a little and grabbed his belly, stumbling to the side, drawing the attention of a store clerk. He couldn’t do anything about it, his stomach was turning itself in knots trying to handle the amount of greasy, spongy ramen in it, and for a moment he thought he would puke again. He didn’t though, and righted himself, stumbling down the first aisle to hide from the cashier. 

Makeup aisle. He walked past posters of models with perfect skin and angular faces under white lights that made his headache worse, and turned right down the lane. There were hair supplies, stationery, cleaning solutions, and batteries down the right hand side, and food, food, food down the left. He tried not to look at it as he barrelled to the last row and turned left, beelining for the pharmacy. 

The pharmacy itself was closed, thank goodness, and he was alone in the aisles of drugs and remedies, bottled with warnings and capped on both ends with books about essential oils and natural methods of healing. He wanted straight up drugs, no hippie-roo-ra, no exercises, just that sweet, sweet relief of Tylenol. Or Ipecac. The feeling that was kicking him in the waist was more crying for get-this-out-of-me than just make-me-stop-hurting. 

He was absentmindedly rubbing circles in his middle for any modicum of relief, when something panging deep in his abdomen rocked him hard. He caught his breath and stumbled forward, grabbing the shelf for support as the situation inside him seemed to reach some new level of catastrophe. His stomach expanded somehow, and the pain that caused in his abdomen made tears jump to his eyes. 

“Oh my god,” he whispered, rocking back and forth on the axis of the shelf and hugging one arm around himself. “I need help.” 

Suddenly feeling faint, he squatted down in the aisle and hugged his stomach, breathing as evenly as he could in spite of shaking like a fiend, and feeling the need and the fear of puking. He would never do this again. It felt like a spike was being slowly shoved into his belly button, and his vision was swimming. 

“Oh,” he whispered, turning his face to the side and pushing his hand into his soft midsection. “Oh.” He said again, trying not to cry. 

The sound of someone walking down the central aisle to where he was sent him shooting up into a standing position again, although the clenching, stabbing sensation in his gut almost made him pass out. He crossed his arms over his chest and squinted at the shelves as if deep in contemplation, burping quietly and rapidly to keep from keeling over in pain. 

“Hi sir, can I help you find anything?” 

The employee walked up beside him and looked up at the side of his face, considerate in their tone and positioning. He glanced over and felt his throat close up before he could even think about saying words to this person. They were so cute, which made everything that much worse. Why, oh why, did he come here like this? Unable to talk, walk, stand, or think straight. Oh, and he was pretty sure he was sweating. He cleared his throat and squeaked out a response in questionable cadence. 

“I’m looking for tylenol. Fastest acting.” 

“Okay,” the employee began, turning now toward the shelves. “Well, these are more for injuries, where you’re taking doses regularly over a long period. You’ll want these,” they continued, walking around the end of the aisle to the opposite side of the same shelf, and Li attempted to follow, but taking a step made him buckle as his stomach revolted, and taking another made him fall over onto the rack of pamphlets hanging at the end of the row about health and retirement, hugging his waist. The employee quickly turned and put out a hand to catch him, but he caught himself on the aisle’s wall and panted for breath. 

“Are you okay, sir?” They worriedly asked, and stepped closer to ascertain his affliction, but he stood up again, albeit blinking slowly and swaying, and shook his head no just barely. 

“I’m fine.” His head swam and his stomach stitched itself up with aggravation and distress such that he gasped and doubled over. The employee put their hand to their mask and hurried forward. 

“Oh my gosh, what’s wrong?” They stepped back and looked down the aisle for another employee, but Li put out his hand and shook his head again. 

“Nothing, I’m fine I just--” His weak legs gave out for a second and the employee put an arm around him and reached for their walkie. He quickly grabbed their hand before they could pull it free and put it to their mouths, barely able to keep it together enough to communicate. 

“Don’t call anyone.” He managed to mutter, finally dropping to his knees, bending over with his arms wrapped around his torso. The employee squatted down next to him and brought their face to his. 

“What do you want me to do?” They placed a hand on his back and he seized up under the surprise sensation of compassionate human contact, which made them rub his shoulder quickly, as if to loosen him again. In dire need of assistance, he decided to trust this person with the state of himself he hated and adored the most. 

“I have a really bad--” He turned away, then took a shaky breath and continued. “Stomach ache. I ate something bad, and now I don’t think I can get home. I need--” He put his hand to his twisting gut and shuddered. “I just need pain killer. Then I can go home.” He half met the employee’s fretting gaze and felt a little better emotionally. Their brow was furrowed in alarm, not disgust, as they listened. “If you could just ring me up for whichever one you think is best--” he winced. “I’ll make my way over and pay for it. I just need--” he blew air out of his cheeks carefully, steaming up his glasses in the process. 

In a moment of genuine synergy, the employee reached up and pushed his glasses back in place before he could, then looked right into his eyes with their clear, concentrating gaze. 

“Can you stand up for me?” They raised themselves a little and put out a hand, which Li took and used to slowly unfurl to half height, still bent over, hugging his loins. Leading him slowly to a chair at the vacated pharmacy counter, they waved away a coworker coming to chat, and slowly let him down into the sticky green upholstery. 

“I’ll be right back.” 

They jogged over to the coworker, keys jingling, and Li sat still as if that would make his stomach forget to tie itself in complex loops inside him. He shoved his fingers against it and put his face in his hand. It was lucky this person was as compassionate as they were. It felt nice to be cared about, but he knew he would think back on it in an hour and hate every atom in his body for how he conducted himself. In the present though, he was happy they were returning, and happy his pain prolonged their interaction. 

“Okay,” they said, cracking open the fresh lid of some drug as he raised his head. “My coworker is gonna ring this up as a loss, and we’re gonna see if you can get this down.” 

They shook out five pills and put them in the cap of the bottle on the counter, then went into a side door labeled ‘Employees Only’ and returned with a bottle of water. 

“This isn’t contaminated, I swear. It’s mine and I’m vaccinated.” 

“Wouldn’t care either way.” Li replied quickly, and put out his hand for it. They poured the cap of pills into his palm, and he tossed them into his mouth. The cool water went in after with a shaky hand. 

Problem was, he couldn’t swallow it. As soon as he tried, his diaphragm jumped and made him put it back in his mouth. He tried to force it, and his stomach lurched and he almost retched. 

“Okay, okay,” the employee quickly interrupted, putting a hand on his arm and holding out a trash can from under the counter. “Don’t choke.” 

He reluctantly spat it all out into the trash and wiped a tear at the lost relief and forceful gagging. He turned to the table and groaned quietly, tightly pressing into his stomach and gritting his teeth. 

“I’m sorry.” They consoled softly, watching him squirm. He shook his head and breathlessly answered. 

“It’s fine. I’m sorry.” 

He clenched his jaw and grunted, seizing up in the chair as his stomach rebounded with repeated sinching pain around the stuffed, sick organ inside it. The employee got up and hurried away as he finally let out a choked sob and dug his fingers into his stabbing gut. 

They ran back with a pack of something, ripping it open as they sat down and taking out three flat little disks. 

“These dissolve.” They said, handing them to him. “They taste bad, they’re not long lasting, but you don’t have to swallow them.” 

He put all three in his mouth and shut it quickly, rubbing his tongue on the roof of his mouth to accelerate the disintegration of citrus flavored acetaminophen. 

He put both hands on his belly as they vanished down his throat and he shook with tearless sobs. The thing was contracting and squeezing itself with discomfort and confusion at the compounds fighting digestion. Expired egg noodles did not want to get dealt with by his intestines or his stomach, and repeatedly tried to throw themselves either up his throat or against the swollen walls of his gut. 

He slumped on the counter and groaned, wishing the pain reliever would take it all away immediately. The agony was still ratcheting, and he felt like he may really start crying soon if it didn’t start reversing it’s slope. The light, small hand on his upper arm rubbing hesitantly and softly made him look up and suddenly remember how much he had to thank this person for. Before he could start to express it, they just smiled genially.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve definitely been in your position before.” 

“Seriously?” He couldn’t help replying, and they tucked their hair behind their ear. 

“Yeah. Cramps.” 

“Ohh.” He nodded and put his head back down while they sat quietly and waited. His belly twirled and rolled in his hands, and he burped deeply, feeling the slight expansion and contraction of his gut as the air pushed out of it. 

He pleasantly realized he wasn’t fidgeting any more. His stomach hurt like hell, yeah, but he sat up and felt it tense, but not cramp.

“Feeling better?” 

He inhaled calmly. “Yeah. Thank you so much.” They swept the trash into the trash can and handed him the remaining pills. 

“Oh, I need to pay--”

“It’s cool. These cost like four dollars anyway.” 

“Are you sure? I feel like I’ve cost you a lot.” 

They waved their hand dismissively. “Not at all, here, take these in case you need them later. Remember, those little tablets only last three hours.” He nodded gratefully and bowed slightly as he took the packages and shoved them in his pockets. 

“Also,” the employee continued. “My name’s Hiraya. If you’re ever here again and need some help, holler at me and I’ll be right over.” 

“Thank you.” He replied solemnly, and bowed a little again, not sure what to do in the face of such a debt. “And my name is Li Jie.” 

“I hope you feel better soon Li Jie.” 

“Thank you.” 

They stood and stared at one another for a few moments longer, taking in one another’s eyes and hair behind the surgical masks, wondering what was going to make them walk away. Hiraya finally looked over their shoulder and started to shuffle off. 

“Well, I’d better get back to work. See you around.” 

“Yeah, of course. See you around. Have a great night.” They smiled and backed away, avoiding displays while also nodding, and Li Jie bowed again, calling his thanks as they finally turned to walk off down the aisles. 

He left, the contraband pills rattling in his pockets, and sat back in his car, carefully lowering himself into the seat and ripping off his mask. 

He exhaled, relieved, and sunk low in the seat, looking down at his belly. 

“You’re a monster.” He said aloud, watching it sit volitaly in front of his torso, still twisting, but with much duller pain. 

He drove home to the radio, rehearsing his time with Hiraya all the way back to campus, around the roundabouts, into the parking garage, and as he borderline waddled back to his dorm. He was still uncomfortable; his stomach was too full, but he wasn’t feeling the food-poisoning-esque other symptoms and the stabbing pangs of some supermaxed indigestion. 

He sat down on his bed and held his tummy, massaging the stuffed ball inside it and laying back slowly. It grumbled, and he instinctively braced for pain, but relaxed happily as he felt none. No throbbing, just stuffedness, as he liked to feel after a stream. He almost smiled, and he wished Hiraya were still here. 

If they knew he ate the food knowing it was spoiled, would they have helped him as much? Did it make a difference? Why had they helped him at all? Was it just their nature, or maybe did they think he was cute too? He’d been told he was sort of good looking before by a friend and his girlfriend whose date he’d third wheeled on, and they were honest people, but that was a year ago when he’d been in the gym, dressing to go to class, and not an emotional wreck. Leave it to him to start daydreaming about someone whose face he’d only half seen, who’d felt enough pity on him not to let him pass out in the aisle of a Walgreens. 

Hiraya. _Hiraya._ What a pretty name. They had looked at him so concernedly, and tried to make him feel better with such simple but endearing things as fixing his glasses and trying to catch him that he couldn’t just let it go and move on with his life. 

He took off his shirt and pants and crawled under the covers in his boxers, shivering in the cold, and watching the blinking green light from his harddrive fade away as sleep swept over him hastily. 

* * *

What was probably three hours later, Li was dragged out of sleep without known cause. He blinked lazily in the dark of his dorm, taking in the streetlight through the curtains and the bluelight from his screen saver, wondering why the hell he’d woken up when he was just so exhausted all over. Then it hit him. 

“Augh!” He cried, curling into a ball under his sheets, chest pounding as his faculties woke up to the situation. His stomach was aching as if he had a bomb put inside it like Joker. “Oh,” He gasped, gripping the puffed up flesh and squeezing his eyes shut. “Hiraya--” Another pang curled him up tighter, and he shuffled his hand around under the covers to find his pants. The pills were in there. The pills would stop it, he just needed the p--

“Ahh!” He cried out in agony, shocked at just how much his innermost gut was capable of wailing on him. “Oh god, oh god.” He muttered, crawling down under his sheets to find his pants. He clutched his aching belly as he wriggled to the edge of the bed and felt around on the floor, feeling the carpet pile and some grit, but no jeans. 

He cursed and threw the blanket off, huddling on the edge of the mattress, squinting at the other operatively identical laundry covering the carpet. He crouched on the floor and slid off the bed, crawling around on his hands and knees in the dark to find them while his gurgling stomach put up a fight with his intestines that Floyd Mayweather would struggle to match. 

He had to stop and curl up again, moaning and trying to still it while it wrestled the egg noodles and probably some petrified salmonella inside him. Shirtless, he had to clock it’s diameter. It was big, perhaps a little bigger than he thought it was when he stopped eating. It was puffed up around the middle, a soft give showing water weight and bloat was partially to blame, but it was definitely doing something different, now three hours removed. It was not just protesting it’s size, it was protesting digestion, and that was nauseating. 

“Ooohh,” He moaned, rocking side to side on his back and sticking out his belly in front of him. He belched, his stomach lurched, and he put his hand to his mouth, desperate to stop himself from upchucking. He needed to find these jeans ASAP. He rolled onto his side, forced himself onto his hands and knees with a series of grunts and protesting burbles, then crawled over to the light switch. His stomach reeled and soured. He used the door handle to pull himself to his feet to reach the lightswitch, but felt the spoiled egg noodles rioting in his belly turn over, form themselves into a hard, painful mass, then fall down his gut. 

The light came on, but he went straight for the floor, gripping his middle and wailing. “Holy fuck--” he managed to cry, rolling and gripping his sick belly as the fearful pounding in his chest matched the throbbing behind his belly button. 

His hair was quickly slicked with sweat as he crawled back toward his laundry, but he felt an awful, queasy feeling rising within and laid down carefully, trying to brace himself but actively work against the nausea by breathing steadily and keeping his eyes closed to the terribly bright overhead light. 

“Oh my god, my stomach,” he moaned, cheek to the floor. “My belly hurts.” As if talking to someone, he palmed the underbelly where the battle was raging. “It hurts bad right here.” As if it was listening, it suddenly ripped with cramping, he cried out in pain, and then it roiled and he belched with bilious force. He rocked onto his hands and knees and scrambled over the floor to the tile in front of his bathroom, cursing nonstop in frantic hurry. 

“Fuck, fuck, fu--” He fielded a nauseous hiccup, which bubbled back into him, and a fart alerted him to the impending stage. The rumbling travelled down his esophagus, through his poor, watery belly, down his gut, into his intestines, and through the bloated undercarriage of his massive girth to the end of the digestive tract. 

He hoisted himself desperately into the water closet, panicking as his stomach distended itself slowly for a massive contraction, and he struggled to kick off his boxers as his belly ballooned to critical mass. Just as he threw himself onto the toilet, the balloon deflated instantaneously, and his whole body jerked with the force of expelling the gone-off ramen. 

He could do nothing but sit there and clench his teeth, clench his gut with both his hand and his abs, and clench his sphincter while his insides voided and his belly clenched nauseously with indigestion and frankly, frustration. It had been a hard two months on the whole system, and as he sat there, hunched over, tearing up, cursing and gripping the toilet paper roll tightly, he felt with dread that this might not be the last time this happened. He’d struggled with certain foods lately more than ever, but that sick feeling inside his belly right before it happened had been there before, just in smaller magnitude. The life he was leading came with tangible consequences. 

He had no idea how long it was, although it felt like centuries, and when he finally got up, his tummy was smaller. It gurgled and bubbled incessantly, but he felt like he couldn’t get a single other thing out of it if he tried, so he got in the shower and stood there for a while. He was doing this because he wanted to. He thought it would make him feel better one day and then it kind of did. It made his dick happy, it made his still kind of teenage mind happy, but it made his heart and his digestive system very very unhappy. 

He groaned a little and rubbed across his sore lower stomach, letting the water soothe his tense muscles. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he ate a green vegetable that didn’t come freeze dried in a ramen pack. He ate fruit at breakfast because that was the law amongst the morning dining hall crew, but for the rest of the day it was really just snacks and microwaveable food and dining hall again for dinner. He pinched the fat on his thigh and smiled. 

It was nice though, getting bigger. 

He leaned back and let the water wash over his face, dripping off his hair and down his back, tracing the indentation for his spine and sliding over his ass. He missed women. He’d had a messy few hook ups in high school, but not seeing another person, let alone another girl, while doing online school in this room felt… bad. Not just because he was a horny fuck, but becuase they had a different way of talking than the guys in his discord or a COD lobby. He turned off the water and walked out of the shower, tossing a towel around his neck and opening the bathroom door, stopping to look at himself in the quickly steaming mirror. 

His stomach was a little flatter than it had been of late because of the hell he just went through, but it helped him identify just how much fat he’d actually acquired. It sat over his abs in a padding of humps, it sat on his hip bones like hands around his waist, and it loved his ass, apparently. He hiccupped and winced, grabbing his stomach and turning to the side. Yeah. He liked it. He would keep going. And his dick was still the right size. He’d read that gaining weight could make it smaller, but he put his hand next to it and they were still at the same ratio, so he wasn’t in danger. If that happened, he would have to start reconsidering this plan. It was two am and he had a chemistry lab at noon the next day, so he dried himself off, then fell back into bed. Sleep came quick and with thanks, and he didn’t wake up again until his alarm went off. 


	3. Li's Morning, December 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breakfast is eaten and then uneaten. While out getting snacks, Li picks up more than he was expecting to.

Li woke up with a start. What time was it? He turned over quickly and reached for his phone off the side of the bed while his headache swam behind his eyes. Phew, it was only eight thirty in the morning. For some reason. Then it hit him. 

“Ooh.” He put a hand to his soft, empty stomach. “My stomach hurts.” He clenched the fat in his hand and curled up into a ball. “It’s too early for this shit.” 

A few minutes later he was wearing his hoodie and sweatpants, shuffling to the mirror while holding his midriff with one hand. His reflection showed overgrown black hair, acne, and still no beard, despite being nearly twenty years old. 

“Whatever.” He mumbled, tucking a mask over his face. No one could see what he looked like like this anyway, he may as well just go. 

The dining hall was pretty empty, since it was a Wednesday and the restaurants opened for breakfast on Wednesdays, so he made his way down the empty line, taking a plate, silverware, and a cup of sprite. He bypassed an omelette, eyeing it with disgust, and added a scoop of grits to his plate. Those were healthy-ish, though not if he drowned them in syrup like he was going to. Bacon. Toasted bagel. Meatloaf? Must be leftovers. Oh well, onto the plate they went. He was about to go sit down when a bowl of cut fruit caught his eye. For merit. He sat at one of the single occupant booths and sipped his sprite, taking out his phone to occupy his flickering gaze, feeling run down. 

There were about ten other students inside, sitting alone or on opposite sides of tables. Outside was also scant, just someone with a laptop and someone else eating alone without an electronic or any headphones, like a psycho. 

His stomach twisted and he sighed. He had to eat something before he caved in. The meatloaf was almost better than it was yesterday, and he found himself actually enjoying the stuff for a while, mashing it between his bagel slices and eating it like a sandwich. He felt satisfied, and the pain in his middle had gone down considerably as he polished that off. A sip of sprite and a perusal of his Twitch insights filled the interim between another part of his breakfast. The grits needed about a 2:1 ratio with syrup, and he ate them with the fruit, feeling them hit his stomach as excess after the meatloaf bagel. His stomach sat quietly, accepting the indulgence with a measure of cautionary panging. 

A woman with a cart of plastic bins and an apron came by. He looked up at her from his phone and she probably smiled behind the mask. 

“Take a fruit, baby.” 

He leaned forward and looked into the baskets. He didn’t like fruit just raw, and apples, oranges, and pears did not seem like enjoyable fare, so he took a banana and smiled at her. She probably smiled again, and then walked off, saying the same thing to someone three tables over. He laid the banana on the table and kept scrolling through Twitter. 

The smell of bacon reminded him it was there, and he ate that while the minutes wound down. The dining hall was quiet, and he had a class at twelve, which was no concern of his at the moment. He finished the bacon and sat there, sipping his sprite while letting the stomach ache that had returned due to his lack of self control play itself out in a tide of rising and falling burbling. He laid his hand on it restlessly and groaned a little behind his mask. He drank more sprite and went to clear his place. Oh right, the banana. He couldn’t walk right up to where the lady worked and just throw it away in her face, so although he didn’t want it, he quickly unpeeled it, shoved it in his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and tossed the peel on the plate. There. Done. 

He pushed all his trash into the swinging door and laid the tray on top, separating the silverware and the dishware as directed by the sign, then went back to wipe his booth down with sanitizer. His stomach gurgled. Ooh. He turned from side to side a little, shifting the contents of his stomach down into a more cohesive mass, instead of chunky and uncomfortable like they were, and leaned forward to swipe his rag across the table. 

His stomach didn’t like that. He burped and put a hand to it as he strained to reach the booth wall next to the syrup. His stomach gurgled as he stretched, something inside it churning. He scrunched in and leaned on the table. Really? He couldn’t even eat breakfast in peace? He sat down on the edge of the booth for a minute and held his soft, rioting belly. 

“Ugh.” He muttered. His belly groaned and he felt a jerk in his abdominal muscles of not quite a hiccup. He put a hand to his chest and tried to burp, but quickly leaned back in the chair when it brought up sprite. His belly was heaving visibly under his hoodie, and he wrapped his arms around it, pretending to be asleep while it raged, begging it to subside. He scooted down low with his back to the wall, feeling his arms rise when his gut inflated, then sink back down when it bubbled and petered out. 

He sneakily stuck a hand under his shirt and put his cold palm against his upper belly, bloated and rolling around with something it really didn’t like. “Please, tummy.” He whispered. “Co-operate.” It rumbled angrily and pushed against his hand with a series of growls, and he clenched his teeth and hunched forward. 

He put his forehead on the table as bubbles of indigestion cascaded up and down his abdomen and he squirmed. “Ow. Ow. Ow.” He burped and gasped, feeling a sick roiling in response. He ate breakfast most days, maybe not this early, but holy hell, was it that important that he not eat until ten? His stomach let out a long, loud groan and he blushed, turning toward the wall, scooting into the booth further and trying to quiet the rumbling aftermath. 

There was a cacophony of sickness in him; something he ate was pushing upward, which did not bode well for his esophagus. If he could just finish this table and get to his dorm he could maybe go back to sleep and forsake his next class, or find some pepto bismol somewhere. He steeled his nerve, scooted out of the booth, and ran the rag across the table as many times as he could without buckling, then staggered to the trash can. 

Halfway there, his distended stomach gurgled loudly and someone looked up. He blushed and hurried ahead, trying to still it although it didn’t listen at all, escalating it’s riotous noise as he put the rag in the trash and turned to leave. 

It bubbled with a sudden, intense pain, and he stopped, gripping his waist over his hoodie, suddenly in a battle to not tear up. It gurgled angrily; whatever it had been fighting with had had enough and was going to get what it wanted now, which was out of his insides. He couldn’t help it, he bent over slowly, arms wrapped around himself. 

“Young man?” A cook asked from behind the counter. “Are you alright?” 

He shook his head and sank to the ground, panting, holding his bloated tummy, muttering to himself that he would be okay. But he didn’t know, his stomach hurt so bad he thought he was going to have to get carried to his dorm. Unable to move, he crouched there, then put one hand on the ground, and a burp rose up his gullet and pressed out of him. The cook waved to one of their coworkers carrying back trays. 

“Help him.” 

Li moaned and put his knees on the carpeted floor, one arm folded around his waist while the other went to his mouth intermittently. The server came by and stood over him. 

“Sir? You alright? Your stomach hurt?” He squeezed his eyes shut and nodded, rocking forward and back on his knees, trying his best not to blow chunks all over the floor. The server looked at the cook, who looked at everyone else. 

“Do any of the rest of you have stomach aches?” Everyone looked around and shook their heads in unison, then looked back at Li, gasping, holding his full stomach and trying not to burst into tears. He was so embarrassed, but he couldn’t do anything else but kneel here. His abdominal muscles cramped and groaned, he folded, the server taking a hesitant step forward and asking if he wanted a nurse. 

He shook his head, then nodded, then shook his head again, then his stomach groaned and he cried out quietly. It wasn’t worse than Desirae’s birthday, but it was completely different pain, in his actual stomach, in the upper region where puke and the flu happened. He tried to pay attention to what was transpiring in the room. Someone was being sent to go next door to get a dietician, the next best thing to the nurse, which was across campus, and someone said to get Li something to drink. 

He remembered his sprite, and then the next thought came crashing down. Bananas and sprite were not mixable foods. Almost as soon as he realized what he’d done to himself, his stomach lurched, his guts wrenched, and he went limp. With his last ounce of will, he burst to his feet and ran for the side door, clutching his stomach with his hand and slamming into the red crash bar. He burst out onto the concrete and ripped off his mask just in time as bananas, sprite, and his whole breakfast came hurtling out of him. He almost fell, trying to mostly aim at the wall. 

He gasped for air as heaving pushed him to his knees, and the pain inside his stomach slowly began to subside, as all its sloshing contents disappeared into the daisies in the flower bed by the door. 

When he was done, the server and the dietician were there helping him to his feet and offering him water. 

“You okay?” The dietician asked, handing him a sanitizer wipe to clean his face. 

“Yeah.” He took a swig from the water bottle and touched his empty belly carefully. 

“You think you just ate something that didn’t agree with you?” 

“I know I did, I forgot about you can’t eat bananas and sprite somehow.” 

“Ah, I see. You also shouldn’t drink sprite at breakfast. Do you have a dietary issue I need to know about?” He shook his head. 

“No. It’s just a thing. I’m fine. Hungry though.” The dietician glanced at the mess he left. 

“Yeah, I suppose you would be.” 

The server reached into their apron and took out a packet of crackers, offering it to him. He stared at it, chuckled, and then declined, preparing to go back to his room. 

“Thank you guys, and I’m sorry about… that.” He looked away from the flower bed. “I have to go, I have a class.” 

The dietician told him to take it easy, and the server wished him luck. He nodded and walked off, noting that the two people who were outside earlier were gone, probably to a ten o’clock class. He would just pick up some food from Walgreens and be back in time for his lab. 

He pushed a hand into his soft, relaxing stomach. Crazy thing. He asked it what it wanted, and ran through the Walgreens options. They had more name brands than campus convenience, and the drive would hopefully help cool him off if he let the windows down and maybe played some music. He was sort of in a meditative state after that violent episode. 

He knew what he wanted to do was keep eating like shit, but he didn’t know if he should. Well, no. He actually knew very well that he shouldn’t, he just wanted to know if he could. The bananas and sprite episode was unrelated to the regular overeating and lack of exercise, but the stomach ache he had woken up with was a direct result, and the reason he didn’t immediately think something was very wrong with him today was because he had belly problems similar to that kind of frequently. The blood sugar thing, the desensitization to pain, the headaches, the constipation. It was all because he couldn’t stop when he was full. Not to mention the weight he was gaining. In only a month of this bad habit, he had fat on his hips he didn’t have a month before, and a jiggle to his stomach he hadn’t had since a child. 

He got in the car and looked down at himself. In a hoodie and sweatpants he might be able to be Li Jie from high school who played tennis and hooked up with Cathy and Kendra in the electrical closet that one time. But he wondered what it meant to get bigger. Would he have to act different? Would people even notice? He noticed because he looked at himself naked every day and scrutinized every part of his reflection with scientific intensity, but would anyone else? He assumed he would stop before it got really bad, to the degree of diabetes or obesity, but the whole thing felt a little invigorating if he was totally honest. 

He strapped his seatbelt and went to Walgreens, pulling granola bars off the shelf with a gatorade and a gogurt. Dropping everything on the counter, he massaged his heartburn with the heel of his hand and glanced up at the cashier. They were looking right back at him, hoping he was going to look up, it seemed. 

“Hi!” 

He stuttered a little, caught off guard completely by Hiraya standing there with his second go at breakfast in her hands. “H-hey.” 

“How ya doin?” 

“I’m doing good,” he said, though he was not good and actually kind of queasy. “How are you?” 

“Fine! I wasn’t going to cover today, but now I’m glad I did.” 

He smiled a little. “I wasn’t going to get breakfast here, but now I’m glad I did.” 

She scanned all his items and he took out a ten, but then she applied her discount and he laughed and switched it for a five. 

“Thank you.” 

She took his money and put the few cents change in her tip jar, winking as she pushed his purchases back over the table. He put the gogurt and the gatorade in his hoodie pocket, and paused at the counter while he opened the granola bars. She looked at him from behind her mask. Feeling lucky, he offered her one of the nutrigrains. She took it and put it next to a water bottle he recognized. 

“Hey, uh, are you free anytime soon?” He began, shifting his weight.

“Yeah.” 

“Do you want to go on a date some time?” 

Hiraya’s coworker immediately looked up from texting at the register next door and put their hand to their mask, “oOoOoh”-ing like a sixth grader. Hiraya smiled and looked up at him a little smug. 

“How’s tomorrow?” 

“Tomorrow?” 

“Yep.” 

He thought about it. There was no time like the present, and since every day was the same now, he had no reason to wait. “Sure. Tomorrow. Is one o’clock good for you?” 

“One o’clock works perfectly. I have a twitch stream that ends right then.” 

Li leaned against the counter, partially to ground the conversation, partially because his stomach still hurt. “You stream? I do too, that’s so cool.” 

“I haven’t met another Asian streamer in person before.” She perched on a stool and took out her phone. “This is my account.” 

‘c1ga_aya_aya02’ had a few tens of followers. They shot the breeze about twitch and a recent chess tournament he knew nothing about, and finally, he asked what she did during the day besides Walgreens. 

“Oh, I go to school just up the road.” 

“Just up the road like FDR Millennial?” 

“There’s only one college just up the road.” 

He sucked on his gogurt. “What’s your major?” 

“Geriatric nursing, what’s yours?” 

“Chemical engineering, but that’s crazy how we’ve never seen each other. I want to shout you out on my channel, can we take a picture?” 

She leaned in and he held out his arm. They snapped a few, the other cashier took a few, then it seemed like the interaction was over. 

“Tomorrow, one o’clock... we still don’t have a location.” She said, as Li picked up his breakfast again and looked around. 

“How about the hill by the main road where people play frisbee? That one looks down over the city really nicely.” 

Hiraya beamed. “That’s perfect, I’ll see you there, ‘Li Jie Won’t Die’.” 

“See you there.” And then he left. He walked all the way out to his car, got inside, reversed out of the parking lot, and merged before letting out a whoop of glee and pumping his fists. 

“Still fucking got it!” He shouted, ripping open his nutrigrain bar. “Hell yeah. Who’s the man? I’m the man.” He narrowly missed another car going around a roundabout. “Better not die before I get there, though.” He paused. He wanted to live tomorrow. Nice.


	4. Hiraya's Morning, December 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The events of Hiraya's morning put a little bit of doubt in her mind before her date, but everything is cleared up by a tough conversation. There's evidence of a spark as they look for some place to eat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Entirely non-sexual chapter. Gotta move the plot sometime.

Hiraya’s dorm room woke up with her, slowly, happily, with a sense of anticipation and excitement. She opened her eyes and shivered with happiness, feeling each click and crack in her back as she flexed her muscles and turned over. The ceiling was aglow with sunrise, pink and reminiscent of sunset, and the RGB of her keyboard waved past the corner of her room. She sighed and laid her arms back down on her covers. The day was awake, and she’d better get to it. But she was so comfortable here, and nothing at all was urgent. She glanced at the digital clock on her shelf, then counted up to her first task. It was five thirty nine, her math class was at eight am, and her hair could use a wash. She smelled her sheets. Those too. 

She hopped out of bed and swiveled her arms, stretching her waist and loosening her shoulders. Ugh, being awake at this time was amazing. She pulled off her socks and shorts, leaving them on the floor as she stepped onto the linoleum of her bathroom, stripping off her shirt and dropping it on her shower rug. She pulled the curtain closed, darkening the shower to almost pitch black. 

The hot water cleared the rest of the clouds hanging around her mind and she thought through the whole day while lathering conditioner into her hair. After class was her stream, and after that she’d do some cleaning until her one pm date with Li Jie Won't Die. She didn’t know when that would end, but whenever it did, she would watch her asynchronous aging lectures, and then get dinner somewhere. Who knew, maybe by that time today she’d be able to get dinner with her boyfriend. She turned off the shower. That was getting way, way ahead of herself. 

Breathing in the cherry blossom scented steam and picking up her clothes, she made her way back to the bed. Her laundry and sheets went into a basket and lofi radio came on. She stood in front of her mirror attempting to blow dry bounce into her hair. Once the soft black sheet had a little body to it and a bump on the ends, that was highly good enough, and she put away the blow dryer and peeled off her sheet mask. Patting excess serum into her cheeks, she rifled through her dresser. It was warm these past few mid December days. After a frigid fall, the tide was turning toward the end of summer temperatures, so sunscreen was next, then some bb cream, mascara, chapstick, and--damn it, she was out of blush. 

The graphic tee she took from her dad tucked loosely into a knee length jean skirt sinched with a belt. Crew socks, little sneakers, a cute pair of sunglasses on her head, a blue mask, and her laptop bag made her world-ready, and she left the dorm. She bought an omelette from the dining hall, the lofi beats now transferred to headphones, and she ate outside at a table with one seat, waving at someone eating alone with no headphones a few feet away. Psycho. 

When her omelette and her coffee were gone, she opened her laptop, signed into the lecture, and tried not to fall asleep while her calculus teacher stuttered over antiderivatives and figured out how screen sharing worked for the eighth time. In another tab, she was filling out the homework, and by the time the powerpoint was ending, she was pretty much done. 

She reached her room at ten o’clock, much less eager to clean than earlier that morning, but the sight of her cluttered desk and laundry pile were motivators enough. She bumped some Indonesian beats and lost herself in the methodical improvement until the thought occurred to her to check the time. She had to start streaming literally right now. She sat down and pressed start as soon as the clock ticked over to twelve o’ one. 

“Welcome kings, queens, and mates. Aya is only one minute late, and there’s a good reason for-” She glanced at her viewers. “Wow! There are a lot of you today, let’s get started quickly.” She pulled up the chess game from last time and refreshed herself. It was still the first half, and she was developing pieces in the center of the board, trying to get a good hold on that region. Her gradual suffocation plan was coming together in a few moves or so, then she could begin her attack. She stared at her pieces while she talked. 

“Right, so anyway guys,” She moved a pawn. “I’m one minute late because I was cleaning my room. I haven’t cleaned in like three weeks, and you guys could see the trash accumulating in the corners of the frame from all the stuff on my desk.” She looked around and took the bot’s knight with her bishop, then sucked her teeth in annoyance. Blunder, she forgot that was protecting her furthest pawn. “It’s not like, super clean now, but it’s better and I’ll finish cleaning tonight. But after this stream,” She continued, smiling anxiously as she castled queen-side. “I’m going on a date.” She glanced at chat while her viewers asked her questions about her room, and her date, and her strategy. “It’s with another streamer named Li Jie.” She answered, and then furrowed her brow at the incomprehensible messages coming through her chat. 

“better hope it’s not your birthday”

“Id pay to see that man on a date lmao”

“it a dinner date? Lmao” 

“ask him about Desiraes birthday”

“save my mans please hes legit decaying” 

She lost a position, but still kept watching the chat with confusion. “Okay, it looks like some of you guys are from his stream. Welcome, hi, I hope you learn a thing or two. I don’t really know what birthday thing you’re talking about but-” Someone dropped an image in the chat and she jumped. “Alright, I’m gonna have to ban some of you guys if you can’t chill out.” 

“no look” 

“^^^” 

“that’s your date” 

“This y’all king?”

She didn’t scroll up because she didn’t want to encourage them, but she also didn’t need to. She saw the image, it looked like a screenshot from one of Li’s streams, but he wasn’t doing commentary or playing siege. He looked… sick. 

Frustrated, she banned the person who sent it, blacklisted the word Desirae, birthday, birthday cake, and his handle. They were tagging him, but he didn’t join, and she wasn’t sure what she’d ask if he did. Grateful at his continued lack of appearance, she kept pressing on with her chess game, predicting mate in 12 in her status. She had a hard time tracking the moves because her mind kept going back to the chat and it’s incessant pining for her attention. She made another inaccuracy and muttered angrily, moving her king out of check.

“Seriously, stop it guys. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you’re not here for chess, just leave.” 

“ask him to make you ramen at his dorm” 

“Ew, no!” She exclaimed. “We’re not even dating, and it’s not like that.” Offering to make a girl ramen was a Korean euphemism for casual hookups, but the image that appeared in the chat after that message had nothing to do with a one-night-stand. 

She squealed with surprise and closed the chat window. It was Li Jie, wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing the first time she saw him in Walgreens, but he was in his dorm on the floor, crying, hugging a trash can. 

“Alright. That’s it. I’m stopping chat. This stream is view only from now on.” She smashed the keys on her keyboard and ended the chat. Her usuals sent heart reactions and pouting faces, then his viewers flooded it with pogchamps. She shook her head and muttered to herself, recovering her advantage and finally, taking their rook, put the king in check. Mate in two. 

She waited for the computer to think over it’s options, and a notification in the corner of her stream drew her eyes away. Someone donated one cent, and the description was a picture of Li Jie’s crotch, probably while he was hard, because otherwise... wow. 

“Stop it!” She shouted, and turned her head, frantically trying to click the ‘X’ box with the corner of her vision. “What the heck you guys, am I going to have to block donations too?” She banned the user and stopped accepting donations, huffing annoyedly and finishing the game. 

A user named “Des1raes b1rthday” subscribed to her with a little burst of glitter, and then another one, and another one. 

“That’s it,” she snapped, finally. “I’m quitting. This is borderline harassment at this point. Sorry to my usuals, I’ll be back next week.” Before they could flood pogchamp emotes again, she ended the stream, and sat back in her swivel chair, heart thudding. 

What the heck was that? She couldn’t even get through fifteen minutes of streaming because of his viewers. What were they talking about? Where did they get those pictures of him? Who on earth was Desirae? 

Slightly dreading what she might see, she typed Li_Jie_Wont_Die into her search bar. His latest stream was from just yesterday, right at the top, titled “r6 + chat + ayaaya shoutout”, and the thumbnail was him and her side by side in Walgreens wearing masks, with their handles on their respective sides. The views were at about one thousand, which was more than his average, she noted, as she scrolled back through the streams. They were regular every Tuesday except one a few weeks ago, and another missing from a few months ago. Relieved, but not enlightened, she sat back in her chair and chewed her lip. After he missed a stream he’d had a huge jump in views. The spike went back down to normal numbers eventually, but then a few weeks ago when he missed it again, he had another spike, which carried to just yesterday, with a thousand views. 

That didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Maybe they missed him that much? Maybe he’d said he was going to take a week off to do something crazy? 

She watched the end of the video before the first one missing. Someone who must be his roommate appeared in the background briefly, holding up a peace sign before ducking out of frame, as Li Jie ended the documentary he was commentating on and sighed. 

“Yeah, so that’s the story guys, the flat, hollow earth theory definitely checks out and uhh NASA is a bunch of monkeys in people suits.” The chat replay filled with jokes and escalations, but Li laughed and ended the stream and didn’t say anything about missing the next week. 

In the stream after the missing one, he seemed nervous. He started it up but didn’t talk for a while, then finally cleared his throat, looked at the camera, and greeted his viewers. The chat replay was unavailable, but he was reading it at the time apparently, and he swallowed hard and turned on r6 immediately. He played like usual, but didn’t talk a whole lot and kept glancing at the chat and asking people to stop. He seemed really upset. 

Hiraya’s heart ached at the sight of him uncomfortable because of his crappy viewers. But what were they saying? After her horrible stream this morning, she knew the experience of being kicked out of your own world by a crazy mob was really disconcerting. She remembered that happened, then let herself cry a minute. 

After wiping her face and patting her cheeks cool, she watched the video after the second one missing, and noticed something. The roommate’s stuff was gone. The other bed in the room had been stripped back to its plastic mattress, and the second dresser was covered in just water bottles and trash. Maybe it had something to do with missing the stream? She looked back, and found that the roommate had been gone since the first spike. 

She let the featured recording autoplay while she thought, chewing harder on her lip and furrowing her brow. She wasn’t really watching the video, but one message caught her eye as it rolled through his incessantly annoying chat. He apparently didn’t block all his bots like she did. 

“but does she know about the D3s1r@3s b1rthd@y incident tho” 

So he’d blocked those terms too. She tapped her chin. If Li saw that message that day, he didn’t react. This was starting to annoy her. She wasn’t a huge mystery fan, and this recurring name “Desirae” was not reassuring before her date. 

Checking her phone, she realized she only had fifteen minutes before it was supposed to start anyway. Picking up her laptop bag, she sent Li a text, and fluffed her hair in the mirror, reapplied tinted chapstick, and popped her lips. Asian Nancy Drew was on the scene, and she would find out who this Desirae chick was, if it took tears, beers, or jeers. Li texted her back. 

“K cool, I’ll leave now. You want a slushie? I’m gonna run by the stand.” 

She pursed her lips and looked out the window. She did want a slushie. Him being nice was not helping her draft a Nancy Drew detective plan. She accepted the slushie however, and skipped out of her room, at least happy to be going somewhere with someone for once. 

The walk to the hill they’d chosen was pleasant and short, under the main archway for the campus, between the tech buildings, and ending up next to the tennis courts. She saw Li approaching from the other way, holding two slushies and letting his mask and his hair cover almost his whole face. She got a flush of nerves and stopped short at the walking path, but he looked up and saw her, smiled with his eyes, and beckoned her with a blue drink in his hand. 

Her heart fluttered and she approached, happily taking both drinks so he could rub his cold hands together and sit down. They took a minute to put their respective bags down, pick their drinks, blue cherry for Hiraya, black licorice for Li Jie. They both took a sip and shivered, grinning at one another. 

“Thanks for the slushie. I almost said no, but I’m glad I didn’t. It’s so weirdly warm out.” 

Li smiled. “I would’ve brought you one anyway.” She took another sip and raised her eyebrows. 

“Really?” 

Li nodded. “Yeah. I don’t know a lot but I know that much.” 

She narrowed her eyes at him and popped her lips. “Hm. You’ve been around.” 

He laughed. “I do have a sister.” 

“Really?” Hiraya leaned back and rested on her elbows, watching other students play frisbee in the field at the base of the hill, while others walked back and forth with their masks up and heads down, even though it was warm and genial. Li laid down next to her and shaded his eyes from the sun, staring upward but frequently, she could tell, glancing at her. 

“Just the one. She’s a little older than me and she goes to community college.” 

“What’s she studying?” 

“Asian History, I think.” He sat up. “I forgot to ask, what kind of Asian are you?” 

Hiraya swallowed a mouthful of blue cherry and looked back at him. “My dad’s side is from North Sulawesi.” Li’s eyes widened. 

“That’s so cool. What about mom’s side?” 

Hiraya shrugged. “Philippines I guess, I don’t really know. Never met her.” Li nodded. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay. Sometimes life is like that.” 

Li nodded. “My mom’s family’s from Hong Kong.” 

Hiraya sat up too, a few inches from his face. Her cheeks were still a little hot from crying earlier, and her sunglasses were on her head, not shading her eyes. She smiled, which made Li’s ears go pink. Hiraya glowed on the inside, but unfortunately, she couldn’t forget what she’d had planned to find out on this date. She faced forward and drank on her slushie while he drank his and people-watched. 

“Hey Li?” 

“Mm?” 

“A bunch of your viewers came to my stream today.” 

“I saw. I hope they didn’t bother you. I saw the tags but didn’t join so it wouldn’t be awkward.” 

Hiraya nodded at the ground. “They were a little difficult.” 

He looked over and lowered his slushie. “Were they mean to you? I’ll tell them to stop, I swear I can actually get them to if I bully them enough.” 

“Well, yeah, but I don’t mind that as much as I’m just kind of confused.” He furrowed his brow, and she looked up into his warm brown eyes, concerned for her like she was for him a few weeks ago. “Who’s Desirae?” 

Blood drained from his face and he didn’t say a word. Hiraya searched for his gaze but he all of a sudden couldn’t meet her eye. He looked deeply hurt. 

“I’m sorry, is she an ex-girlfriend?” She shifted and backed up. The air was suddenly stale with fear on both sides of their interaction. 

He shook his head. “What did they say?” 

Hiraya stammered. “They kept talking about ‘Desirae’s Birthday’, and saying I should ask you about it, and they mentioned that thing about a guy making a girl ramen at his place? You know that saying, right?” 

Li nodded. “I know it. But did they say anything specific?” 

“Wait, first, who is Desirae? I still want to know that.” 

“I don’t know who Desirae is.” She crossed her arms and stared at him. “I swear I don’t know who she is.” 

“Okay, then who do your viewers think she is? I had to end my stream early because they wouldn’t stop spamming me about her, and her birthday, and birthday cake, and-” 

“Desirae is some random, hypothetical person who goes to this college. And it was her birthday about two months ago, and that’s pretty much all I know about her. They just got fixated on her as a character because she never went to pick up her birthday cake.” 

“That’s what they were spamming about?” 

“Yes.” 

“Okay, so… what about the rest of it?” 

“What rest of it?” He seemed annoyed, and Hiraya looked around. 

“Look, if you don’t want to talk about it anymore that’s fine, I’ll let you work out whatever is going on with your viewers, and we’ll just drop it and never talk about it again.” 

“Thank you.” 

“No!” She made him look at her, worn out as he seemed. “They said you were, like, ‘decaying’ and not to go out to dinner with you. Are you okay? It was all really weird, but then they kept sending inappropriate pictures and I had to ban chat and donations, and-are-are you crying?” 

Li wiped his face on his shirt and looked away. “I’m not. I’m just frustrated with them for saying that to you, and about me.” 

Hiraya placed a hand on his shoulder delicately and softly, as before. He stilled immediately, but didn’t look back. “Hey hey, don’t cry. They totally suck. I just want to know what’s going on, and if I need to be concerned.” 

He sighed and wiped his face again, as she waited patiently with on his arm, gently moving her hand back and forth on the quivering muscles. Once he was ready to talk again, she gave him a light squeeze and let go. 

“So I was in a really bad place two months ago. Lonely, sad, y’know, and I just wanted to make myself feel whole.” 

“Is it because your roommate left?” 

“Yeah,” he whispered. “‘Cause my roommate left. But also, all this quarantine stuff has really gotten to me, and I felt like I was the only person on earth.” 

She nodded. 

“I tried to make myself feel good. I went to campus convenience and I looked around, and I saw this birthday cake on sale. It was the kind you bring to a party, and it had the words ‘Happy Birthday Desirae’ on it. I asked the bakery about it and they said someone ordered it that morning to be ready that afternoon, but never came to pick it up. They didn’t want to throw it out and the day was ending, so they put it up for sale. I didn’t have much time left before my stream, so I just bought it.” 

“Desirae really is just some hypothetical person.” 

“Yes.” 

“Then what happened?” 

Li looked down at the grass and started to pull it up. “Well, sometimes I do mukbang on my channel, and I had just bought that cake, so…” 

“So you ate it?” 

“Yeah.”

“The whole thing?” 

“Yeah.” 

“On the stream.” 

“And they were obsessed with it ever since. It made me sick, and a lot of people liked that, so they took screenshots and made memes out of it I guess. They thought it was disgusting, so they won’t stop talking about it. I just want to move on, though.” He cleared his throat and looked down at the clouds at the bottom of the horizon, floating over the trees and brushing the tops of the big city far away. 

Hiraya rubbed his shoulder and nodded. “I see. They liked watching you hurt yourself because they’re voyeurs, and now they like the power they have over you by reminding you of it.” He wiped his face on the inside of his collar. “And thought coming to me would be a way to make you miserable again for their entertainment.”She squeezed his shoulders gently with her left arm and put her right hand on his right hand pulling up grass. “Well they were wrong.” 

Hiraya gently turned his chin with two fingers so they were nose to nose. “You’re lonely, I’m lonely, the whole world is lonely. That should be helped, not teased. Them coming at us like that, trying to make you uncomfortable, is just a cruel manipulation tactic that’s been used since the dawn of time. I’m so sorry I questioned you like you’d done something wrong. I was nervous, not thinking about you or what might be going on. I’m really, really sorry, Li Jie.” 

“I forgive you. Hiraya?” 

“Mhm?” 

“Do you want to go out with me?” 

“Um—Well, I think you’re attractive but this is only our first date, so…” 

“I like you. I think you’re beautiful, and the kindest person I’ve ever met.” 

“Okay. Thank you.” 

“Let me know if you start liking me.” 

“Hm?” 

“If you find later that you like me, just let me know, will you?” 

Hiraya stared at his honest, vulnerable face, stained with tears and his tongue black with licorice slushie dye. She nodded. 

“Okay.” 

“Thanks.” He sucked on his slushie, which was quite melted now. “Your tongue is blue.” 

She giggled and stuck her tongue out, then reached into her laptop bag and took out her phone. “Smile!” She held the camera up to the light, blocking the sun from their faces, and brightened it. Seeing their images, she quickly turned to Li’s face, licked her thumb, and cleaned his face from the evidence of tears, moving his hair out of his eyes and tapping his pink cheeks. All the while, he stared at her and watched while she tidied him, and she was sure she was very bright red and was glad she didn’t have on blush. 

“Alright.” She said finally, turning back to the camera. They took pictures, chose filters, added each other’s social media, and teased each other for their backgrounds. Li Jie’s was an EXO album cover, which he attributed to his sister’s obsession leeching on to him, and Hiraya’s was a picture of herself in a shop in Japan with a Fairytale cosplayer. 

They laid on their backs and watched the sun go by, talking about what it was like to stream, how they got started, who their favorite content creators were, and their likes and dislikes. They turned on their sides and played travel chess, in which Hiraya tried not to totally destroy him, but couldn’t resist the openings and gambits he practically set up for her. 

They talked about family and what crazy immigration tales they each had, about aunts and uncles and eccentric cousins, and always, always some royal person way back in the blood line that would one day pour dividends into their family’s name when some such and such died. The sun started to go down, and Hiraya’s stomach growled. 

“I’m hungry.” 

“Same.” 

“I want buffet food since we kept talking about it.” 

“I could go for buffet food right now too.” 

“My car’s closer.” 

“Lead the way, then, ma'am.” They got up from the grass and stretched, looking around at the changed surroundings, the frisbee team gone, the students all going toward the dining hall, the darkened forest at the edge of the campus grounds. 

She led Li Jie to her car, opened the driver’s side door, then leaned on the roof and turned to him, a peculiar expression on her face. He stopped and looked back at her with that wide eyed expectancy again, and she smiled. 

“I think it’ll be soon.” 

“What will?”

“When I like you.” 

He smiled back. “Good.” 

Then he got in the car, she looked out of the garage view at the campus below and clucked her tongue with satisfaction. She was going to do everything she could to like him soon. 

“So since you want to date me,” She said, turning the ignition. “You have to meet someone first.” 

“Your dad?” 

“You’ll meet him afterwards.” 

Li buckled his seatbelt, smiling. “You say that with confidence. I like that.” Hiraya blushed a little and left the parking lot. “Seatbelt?” Li asked, glancing over. 

“You’re a really forward guy.” 

“You’re as forward as I am, and I think it helps.” She buckled her seatbelt and got on the highway. “The city?” He asked, looking at the street sign they passed under. 

“The person works there. She’s kind of like my older sister, kind of like an auntie. I call her tita. Tagalog for aunt.” 

Li nodded. “What do I call her?” 

“You call her tita.” Hiraya replied, merging. “It’s what she would want you to call her if you were my boyfriend. Also, if you’re serious about this,”

“Which I am.” 

Hiraya couldn’t resist a little chuckle. “Lean this phrase: ‘Naiintindihan ko’. It means ‘I understand’.” Li appropriated the phrase and Hiraya corrected him. “No, ‘Naiin-’, you’re rushing to the ‘ii’ and ignoring the ‘na’. Li tried a few more times, inching closer to proper pronunciation, until Hiraya snapped her fingers. “That was it! You got it! Say it again, exactly like that.” 

“Naiintindihan ko?” 

“Yes!” 

Li and Hiraya beamed at each other for a moment, then both looked away, as it suddenly grew warm in the car. Hiraya changed lanes and got off the highway at the city exit, sitting forward as the traffic suddenly became aggressive. Someone cut her off and she slammed on the brakes. 

“Jerk.” 

“Asshole.” 

She and Li muttered simultaneously, and then they both smiled again, but looked ahead. Li watched the buildings they passed, dirty stores and take out restaurants, antique shops dropped here and there, newspapers blowing down wet streets and people in light jackets and thick masks avoiding them. 

As they progressed deeper into the city, the lights took a red and orange twinge, and the population got a bit older. The few blocks here were settled by south Asian immigrants, and Hiraya pulled into a side street and entered a chain link parking lot quietly, and turned off the car. 

They stepped out and walked through the gravel lot littered with weeds, to the front of a row of buildings, and Hiraya led him to one dark storefront over which a neon sign shone the words “Tiger Buffet”.


	5. Tiger Buffet, December 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Over dinner at Hiraya's aunt's buffet, Li learns a lot more about his girlfriend than he expected to, and struggles to keep his cool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Light sexual talk and overeating. This chapter's sort of here for posterity.

“Kumusta po kayo ngayong umaga, tita?” Hiraya called as she opened the door, holding it for Li Jie to file in after her. Meeting your girlfriend’s parent was always awkward, but since Hiraya lost her mom at a young age, pretty much every Filipino woman in the city had decided to be her auntie, so he had to pass the test with all of them too. 

The auntie came out of the curtain behind the front desk with her mask on her chin and a purse already in her upper lip, judgement in the flick of her hand as she tossed the apron on the desk by the register. She looked Li Jie up and down while he stood there and tried not to look down at her, but also not look at the floor, but also not look her in the eye. There was a lot of bouncing around while she muttered something to Hiraya, who stood by and looked on him proudly. 

“You better not break Missy’s heart, you hear me?” 

“Naiintindihan ko.” He answered firmly in the rehearsed Tagalog, while Hiraya beamed.

“You trained him well, that was very good.” 

Hiraya grabbed her Auntie’s arm and whispered something in her ear. Li looked around the buffet. It was kind of small, but most places in the city were this size, since the lots were packed together like sardines. There were low dividers running up and down the dining area at the back with mother of pearl designs on the tops, and tables pushed up against them with table numbers painted on the wooden napkin boxes. A few people sat at these tables, mostly elderly, and most of them were ordering things off the menu, not going up to the buffet that was right next to the entrance. From where he stood, the tile patterned out to the right, over which trolleys of hot food sat under silver heat lights. It was mostly American food, in deep basins in double rows. Aisles of pasta, appetizers, Americanized Mexican food, Americanized Chinese food, Americanized Indian food, sat side by side, cropped in by stacks of sturdy bowls, steam from them twisting up to the short rooves. He swallowed. 

“Li, tita says you look good.” 

“Salamat.” He bowed and held out his credit card, offering to pay for their meal.

Tita took the card and smiled at him, which was a significant win. After the receptionist handled his payment, Hiraya took his hand and led him to a table in the back corner, at which the tita couldn’t see them, and the old people who sat by the food and the kitchen wouldn’t be bothered by them. Aware that he was being watched, he pulled out her chair, let her sit down, kissed her, and sat on the other side of the table, looking directly at her face, and not at the auntie at the end of the aisle. Hiraya was just effervescing with excitement. 

“This is so great, Li, she hasn’t said a single bad thing about you yet. I mean, she asked about a lot of stuff, but she says you look like you know your ass from your head.” 

“Great. I always wanna look like that.” 

Hiraya laughed and picked up the menu. “You should probably go get food, I’m gonna order something fresh.” 

“Shouldn’t I order something if you order something?” 

She shook her head and waved her hand, so Li got up, walked past her and took a plate off the end of one of the trolleys. Tita watched from the entrance to the kitchen, and the receptionist looked between them, amusedly sizing up the tension, as Li bowed politely and put japchae on his plate. Tita put her head back in the curtain, and he tried not to keep glancing up at it. 

He didn’t like mixing his courses at a buffet. Just because they had pizza and also had seaweed salad did not mean to eat them together. He always did Asian food first, and served himself kimchi, some dumplings of course, a bowl of white rice, gyeran mari, a bowl of miso, and a few mochi. Hiraya liked spicy food, so he put a little spicy squid on a saucer, and carried it all back. When he arrived, a waiter was putting down two 32 ounce red cups of coke, and he quickly placed the food down to make space for the drinks, taking them and the straws as soon as he could. In the corner of his eye, tita nodded, and he suppressed a smile. 

Hiraya noticed it and turned around, frowning and waving away her auntie, who huffed and wandered off back to the kitchen. 

“Hopefully she won’t do that the whole time we’re here.” 

“It’s okay,” Li responded, breaking his chopsticks and rubbing them together. “I like when people watch me take care of you. It makes me feel like a man.” 

“Well I don’t like it.” Hiraya responded, looking over his food. “It makes me feel like an infant.” 

“I got you calamari.” 

“It’s not calamari.” 

He looked at her sideways. “I know.” 

“Sorry. Force of habit after dating so many Americans.” 

Li sipped his drink and poured soy sauce into a little saucer, picking up a dumpling, dunking it, and eating it whole. Hiraya hung her purse on the side of her chair and looked over her shoulder, drumming her french manicured nails on the table. He asked her what she got, and she gestured to the waiter, who was returning with a steaming hot cast iron pot on a wooden tray. 

It smelled like pepper and seafood, and he blinked back tears at just the smell. 

“Whew that smells spicy, babe.” 

She grinned and wiggled her fingers with excitement, tucking her hair behind her ears to inhale the steam. 

“Mm, doesn’t it? It’s tita’s recipe and it’s a cold killer.” 

“I fuckin’ bet, you could cure coronavirus with that. It makes the japchae spicier just by smell.” He twisted up the glass noodles and eggplant and slurped it down loudly. She took her chopsticks, broke them, and stole some of his vermicelli while she waited for her stew to cool. 

“That’s yummy.” She ate some of the fried squid. “That’s good too. Gimme some kimchi.” He picked up a few pieces and put it in her stew pot. She scooped them out with a wide, shallow spoon, and slurped down broth, crunching the cabbage leaves on the way. “Mmm.” 

Li smiled at the table a little and kept eating dumplings, while she slowly ate her fried squid and cautiously sipped her stew, alternating with coke to cool her mouth, and sometimes stealing rice or dumplings when it got too spicy even for her seasoned tongue. He knew he had to finish his food, whatever he got, so when he got up a second time, leaving Aya to finish his kimchi and white rice, he took stock of his stomach. He wasn’t hungry, and he was barely hungry when they got here, but he still had some room, and far be it from him to ever go to a buffet and not do it justice. Plus, the more he ate, the more tita would get to assess him, and the more he proved he was a good, appreciative man for Hiraya. He also just really wanted pizza, and was going to come up with any possible way to write that off as good nephew behavior. 

The pizza and tacos could be eaten together, as they were both bastardizations of their original forms, and to be honest, were probably made with similar ingredients for the sake of economy. This was also the appropriate time for European foods like shepherd's pie. Those three things were about enough for a big course already, but he passed by fries and couldn’t resist a scoop. When he got back, Hiraya was just dredging up the last peppery spoonfuls of her cauldron of spice, slurping down tofu and spring onions, so he could reach out and take the dishes, while replacing them with the food he’d just brought. She popped a fry in her mouth as she called after him carrying the dishes to get them more coke. He just nodded and put the stack of plates and bowls into the bins of soapy water, placing the pot and wooden tray separately on a silver trolley of cups and gravy boats. When he returned with new coke, Hiraya was almost done with the fries. 

“Hey!” He quickly ate the last two and she tried to look innocent. He sucked his teeth and pulled the plate with his taco on it closer. 

“What’s this?” She pointed to shepherd’s pie, and he responded with the name, and she looked vague and nodded her head. He sighed. 

“Do you want to try it?” 

“Oh! Well, since I’ve never had it before, sure.” 

He rolled his eyes and pushed it toward her, while she wiggled her fingers with glee again, and put her spicy stew spoon into the mashed potato crust. 

They ate quietly, talking a bit here and there about tita and the other titas, and Hiraya’s time spent here as a little girl while her dad went to work as an airport cleaning staff manager. Li finished the taco and was halfway through the pizza, with the belt on his khakis just starting to get tight when Hiraya put down her spoon, pushed away the empty bowl of shepherd’s pie, and groaned. Li looked up. 

She leaned back in the chair, eyelids heavy, and placed both hands on her stomach under the table. He resisted the urge to look over the edge with herculean effort, and simply sipped his coke and took another bite of pizza, not trying to pay too much attention to it; but that plan went out the window. 

She had on a nice jean skirt and a t-shirt whose design was from some Japanese punk band from the 80s. She put a hand to her chest and hemmed, reaching up to toss her hair over the back of the chair and slouch down, hand resting on her belly. 

“I’m so full.” She complained, closing her eyes and rubbing slowly across her stomach. Li swallowed and looked only at his pizza and the table of empty plates. 

“I’m not.” He lied, getting up to put away their plates, with the crust of the pizza in his mouth. He just needed to walk away. He reset their plates, then stood for a moment, at a loss. He didn’t want more food. The tuck of his navy blue button down shirt was already getting kind of filled out with belly fat. But if Hiraya kept talking like that, he was gonna get stiff at the table. 

More food it was. A third course consisted of fruit and hors d'oeuvres, little garlic knots, actual calamari, grapes, sliced melons, spring rolls, and a croissant, because why not. When he sat back down, Hiraya was upright again, sipping her coke and looked pitifully at his hands loaded with plates. 

“You’re really gonna make me do this?” She asked, sitting up to the table and eyeing the melon in particular. 

“I’m not making you do anything,” He replied, sliding into his chair and topping up their cokes with a pitcher. “You eat it if you want it.” 

Hiraya swallowed her drink and picked up a fork. “I like honeydew.” She ate a piece of melon. “And I like spring rolls.” She continued to pick at the food, while he did the same, uncomfortable from the clothes he was wearing, wishing he was in sweats and a t-shirt so he could enjoy this. She looked miserable while she did it, but kept spearing grapes, and calamari, and cantaloupe as if someone was making her. Finally, she chewed a spring roll tirely, cheeks heavy, and belabored the swallowing, as if she almost couldn’t do it. Uh oh. Here we go. 

“Ungh!” She cried, rocking back in the chair, hunched over. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and patted her stomach. “I’m stuffed, babe. How can you keep eating?” 

“Dunno.” He mumbled, biting the croissant and looking at the plate. She kept massaging her stomach while he ate quietly, occasionally sighing or huffing with tiredness. Li ate calamari and watched condensation crawl across the table. She started scrolling on her phone while sipping her coke, as he finished up their food. Garlic knots were a bad idea. They were tough to eat this late into a buffet, and settled over the fruit and sauce uncomfortably in his stomach. He stacked up the cleaned plates, sat back in the chair, and palmed his stomach. 

“You get enough?” Hiraya asked. Li nodded and wiped his mouth on a napkin, stretching side to side to pull his gut out of his belt. Tita appeared at the table, and they both looked up attentively, as she took out two slices of cheesecake and put them on the table. 

“We’re done, tita.” Hiraya started to shake her head, but tita cut her a look. 

“Don’t say no to my food, babae.” 

“You always feed my boyfriends too much, tita, they all get fat.” 

Li looked up suddenly, but Hiraya wouldn’t catch his eye, letting her aunt take the dishes with Li’s help, and when tita left the table, she put a fork in her serving. 

“Shall we?” 

“I’m your boyfriend?” 

“Yep.” She replied, and ate her cake. Li smiled hard and took a bit of his, glancing up at her to find her happy eyes meeting his. Eating this one piece of cake really wasn’t all that bad, since he’d eaten an entire one in one sitting before, but it could’ve been a plate full of nails and he would have grinned while he ate it. They both took a bite off the end, licking the matcha dust off their lips and shivering a little at the gooey sweetness. Hiraya went back for another bite quickly and Li chuckled. 

“This is really good.” She said defensively, inspecting the piece on her fork. “Although I can’t really finish it.” 

“I’ll finish yours if you don’t want it.” 

“It’s fine, I’ll just power through. Ugh. I feel super full though, I had like three courses.” 

Li said nothing, but nodded as he ate. She kept shifting around in her chair, moving her hair from one shoulder to the other, and huffing uncomfortably. As long as she didn’t say anything though…

“Oooh…” She moaned, putting down her fork. “I think I ate too much Li, we might have to sleep here.” She joked, leaning against the wallpaper and rubbing her tummy with a frown. Li took another bite and smirked. 

“I don’t think tita would like it if we slept here together.” 

Hiraya batted a hand at him. “It was just a joke.” Li shrugged and paused in his eating to massage the fat of his stomach and take a breath. It was uncomfortable. It was becoming more uncomfortable, because Hiraya across the table was breathing heavily and holding her stomach and it was giving him a hard on. He crossed his ankles and sat in to the table, focussing only on finishing his meal so they could pay and go. 

She had such a pretty profile. Her jaw was gentle and vanishing, her nose bridge dipped behind her lashes and her cheekbone jutted out under the corner of her eye. She had flat, pragmatic lips that frowned but not in a sad way. The type of girl who looked good in any makeup or hair style. Her tan skin was flattering, and her contact lenses made her eyes look like a cat’s. He could never have drawn or imagined a set of features that would please his sentiments so well, and now that he’d seen them, he didn’t think he could draw or image ones that fit them better. 

She burped and grabbed her belly. “Ungh.” She grunted pitifully, and twisted to the side. Without meaning to, he glanced at her waist, and the little bump under her shapeless t-shirt was still enough to do it for him. He dropped his fork and looked aside, turning pink. 

“Li Li?” Hiraya turned towards him, looking at his glowing cheeks, and around for what the issue was. He cleared his throat and put his hand on his knee, shaking his head and going back to his cake. She looked around the table, then at herself, and gasped with surprise. 

“Oh, I forgot you find this hot!” She jokingly rubbed her hands all over her belly and looked at him sensually from under her eyelids. “Does this turn you on? How about this,” She closed her eyes and wrinkled her face in pantomime discomfort. “Oooh, Li Li, my tummy hurts… Can you rub it for me? Ah Li Li, I have such a tummy ache.” 

“Hiraya-” 

“Ooh, I’m so full...” 

Li tried not to laugh as he grabbed her arm and she opened her eyes, gleaming with mischief. He held her gaze with grave seriousness she wasn’t expecting, and her lips parted a little with surprise. He looked right into her face and just slightly leaned forward. 

“If you were serious about sleeping here tonight-” 

“Li!” She smacked his hand and he laughed, spearing the last piece of her cake and eating it while she scowled at him and shook her head in disbelief. 

“Be honest, were you a hoe in high school?” 

“No!” 

“Are you a virgin?” 

“Should you really be asking that in your tita’s restaurant?” 

“So you’re not!” 

He shrugged and finished his cake, stacking both of their plates and sighing with satisfaction. He leaned back in the chair and pushed his belt down below his stomach. _Ah…._ That was much better. It looked worse, that was for sure, but it felt amazing. Hiraya watched him with a look on her face that said she was running a train of thought not totally opposed to his. 

“So you’re not a virgin. When was your first time?” 

“Does it matter? Why are you asking me this?” 

“You can ask me after.” 

“I don’t care! I don’t want to.” 

Hiraya put her chin in her hand. “Really? You don’t want to ask me my body count?” Li gave her a displeased look, and she nodded approvingly. “All the other guys I’ve been with popped that question within the first hour.” 

“So there’s more than one?” 

She pointed at him. “Aha!” 

“I’m just joking!” He quickly doubled back, and put his hands in the air. She narrowed her eyes and lowered her hand. 

“Really though,” She said finally. “We should talk about it.” 

“Here?” 

“Tita’ll stay busy cooking. She’s been by enough times, she seems to think well of you.” 

“Hmph. What do you think of me?” 

“Me?” Hiraya shifted in her seat again, squeezing the side of her fully belly with her fingertips to massage some cramp there. “I dunno. I think you’re hot. I think you’re funny. I think you make me wanna be happy, and you’re considerate, and a bad chess player. Like, really bad. But sometimes I don’t know. There have been a lot of awful guys in my life who were cute, funny, and made me smile. Tita helps me take off my girlfriend glasses and put on my logically thinking, professional, adult glasses when I’m so caught up in someone I start to blur the lines.” Li nodded. She kept talking, pushing her fingers against the side of her stomach.

“I guess I think you’re a pretty good start. I don’t know everything about you, and I won’t know everything about you until we’re like eighty years old and sick of each other, if we make it that far, but I know one thing. When tita likes you, I feel safer.” 

“Can I help you feel like you’re being a logical, professional adult?” 

“No. Cause you’re my boyfriend, and I can’t trust you. You’re the one on trial, I can’t let _you_ try to help me pass judgement on _you_.” 

“You can’t trust me?” 

“Precisely.” 

“Hiraya-” 

“I know it’s not healthy, before you say it.” 

“Okay. Are you gonna do anything about that?” 

“Keep taking you to meet titas and see how far we get.” 

He knitted his brow a little. “Alright.” She watched him pensively while he tidied the table a little more and looked off down the aisle. 

“So, let’s talk about our sex relationship.” She continued. “We have to have this conversation sometime, and I think we’re both annoyed enough at each other to have it well.” 

He frowned. “Do we? Are we?” 

She raised an eyebrow. “You sound like a virgin right now.” 

“And so what if I was?” He tossed his hands in the air. “What does any of it matter? I won’t do anything unless you start it. Does that work?” 

“Why don’t you want to talk about this? Is it really because we’re in tita’s restaurant?” 

“Because I’m not annoyed with you! You’re really hot right now!” 

She stared wide eyed for a moment, then put her hand over her mouth and started trembling with laughter. “Forreal? Wait, really? Oh my gosh, I keep forgetting. And then I--and the whole time you--oh Li Jie!” She laughed out loud and threw her hair back. “Fine. Okay, let’s go about this another way. Do you want to have sex?” 

“Now?” She smacked his hand. “Okay, sorry, I was joking. Yes, I do, in general. With you.” 

Her eyes glittered with laughter. “Okay. Aside from presently, when do you think we should?” 

He shrugged. “Uh, I don’t know. Do we have to put a date on it? I feel like it usually goes better if you don’t.” 

Hiraya nodded. “I agree. Now I know what you like, a bit at least, is there anything else?” 

Li looked at her doubtfully. “Aya, I think that might be too much for your tita’s restaurant.” 

“Answer me.” She stared at him, her tone all of a sudden cold. He froze for a second, and then went pink on the ears a touch. Hiraya smiled. “Domination…” She said to herself, as if making a note. Li went pinker. “That’s good. I’m into that too. Do you like to switch, or just bottom?” 

“Holy hell, Hiraya!” Li looked behind him and then back at her, stunned. “Switch.” 

“Perfect!” He rolled his eyes and swallowed uncomfortably. He felt like tita must have her ear to the other side of the wall or something. This was a highly volatile situation for many reasons. She resurrected his erection with that cold look, so this conversation had to both finish up and take longer. 

“Foreplay?” 

“Yes.” 

“Porn?” 

“Like, together? Never tried it, but sure.” 

“Toys?” 

“Wow, Aya. Uh, again, never tried it, but sure if you want.” 

“I want. Okay, now here’s a weird one. Roleplay?” 

“Can I be honest?” 

She took a sip of her drink and leaned in, enthused. “Please do.” 

“Absolutely not.” She nodded slowly and looked him up and down as if she was trying to make sense of it. He rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged. “It just feels awkward to me. I can’t really convince myself the other person is whoever they’re saying they are, and I don’t believe I am what they say I am and then I start feeling imposter-ish and then I’m in my head and it just- I don’t like it much.” 

“Okay. Can I propose that roleplay can go beyond characters, and even be as abstract as who you wish you were, or a part of you you like to deny?” 

“You sound like my mom’s sex counselor. If you think you can find a way to do roleplay where it doesn’t feel like play pretend, then I’m willing to try it with you.” 

Hiraya pumped her fists. “Yeah! Alright. How was that? Did you make it? Can we go pay now?” 

He looked down in his lap and frowned a little. “Gimme a minute.” 

“I almost feel like I should time it.” 

“Please don’t.” Hiraya giggled and sipped the last of her coke, rubbing her tummy and picking up the plates. He spoke up. “I’ll get it in a minute, babe, don’t worry.” 

She still went and put them away, returning to the table to pick up her purse, stretch from side to side, and pat her stomach. 

“I’m gonna go talk to tita, you go to the bathroom and come back when you’re ready. I really do feel sick though, can you drive us home?” Li nodded, and Hiraya turned to go, but then turned back, leaned down over the table, and kissed his cheek. “I’ll miss you.” He smiled. 

“I’ll miss you too.” 

Once she was gone, he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. _Whew. That was rough._ He lumbered up from the table, adjusting his belt as he skirted off into the nearby bathrooms. He pushed open the men’s door and stepped into the dark, empty room, with two stalls and two sinks under weak can lights that lost the competition against nearly black walls and brown tile. First things first, get this belt off. He unbuckled the front and slid it off his hips, then unbuttoned his khakis for good measure and sighed. He rubbed his hands down the bulge of his belly, then looked down at his pants. Seriously? 

He lunged, alternating legs, shifted his boxers, and breathed evenly, trying to distract his mind. What were his plans after this? Homework, playing some siege with his friends. He’d been meaning to switch his headset because the direction on the one he used now wasn’t great, even though the mic was. It was really his old skullcandy hesh 2s that gave him the best sound, even though they were nearly five years old. He got them sophomore year of high school for christmas while his mom was dating a really rich guy. He’d hated that boyfriend, but because of the headphones was on good behavior for the whole day. He promised her that. There we go. Problem solved. 

He reluctantly stuffed his gut back behind his pants button, retucked his button down shirt, and lastly secured the belt with reluctant grunts. He felt a little better. Out in the dining area he could see Hiraya, the receptionist, and her tita all wrapped up in an animated conversation in Tagalog which featured a lot of slaps on the arm, rushed and ineffectual whispers, hands raised and inclinations of the head. He watched for a while, pretending for a second that there was no pandemic, and he and his girlfriend were in her auntie’s restaurant, and would walk through the city holding hands and eating from food stands like he wanted to. The scene looked so happy and normal. Tita was scolding, Hiraya was playing hooky, and the young receptionist was trying to keep up and make jokes without bringing down tita’s wrath on herself. 

But unfortunately that wasn’t the case. A customer came in, and they all slung their masks over their faces and tittered to themselves as they shuffled away, tita to the kitchen, and Hiraya toward the bench by the umbrella rack. He raised his hand and caught her attention, then together, they left the store and got in the car. 

Li slid into the driver’s seat and sighed, placing a hand on his belt over his belly. Hiraya did the same, placing a hand on her skirt. 

“We should come back here.” She mumbled, closing her eyes. 

“Yeah, it was nice.” Li replied, lazily turning the ignition with her keys, placing a hand behind her headrest and reversing out of the small gravel parking lot behind the buffet. 

“You can take your belt off now if you want.” Hiraya added, peeking one eye open and looking at his grim expression. 

“Hold on, I’m trying not to hit this guy.” 

“I’ll do it.” 

“K.” She reached over and slid the excess out of his belt loops, then pulled it across his stomach, momentarily sinching it, as he wrinkled his face with discomfort, then the prong fell, and she pulled the leather strap out. It made a noise snapping against itself as it slipped through, and her hand gently touched his inner thigh. He jumped. 

“Woah.” Hiraya chuckled. “You got a bucking bronco bud.” 

“You touched my crotch.” He muttered. She patted his knee. 

“I’ll touch you more later.” 

“Can’t. Gotta play siege with my boys tonight, and we both have homework.” 

“But inside you said-” 

“I was in a different headspace. But I’ll tell you what, you hit me up later this week when you’re in that headspace, and I promise, whatever I have planned, I will put it aside for you.” She smiled and looked at him with her eyes narrowed. 

“You promise?” 

“I promise.” 

Hiraya smirked and reclined her seat. She didn’t say anything else the whole way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tl;dr - they're dating now.


	6. Prince Charming, December 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiraya forces Li to make good on his promise. The sadness of parting ways for winter break puts a bittersweet note in their last night together, though not before a slightly comical mistake is noted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to add some tags cause of this chapter. No stuffing elements involved, just good ol' missionary.

For once in her life, Hiraya was excited to not masturbate. Her mind was always inconvenient, since she had a sex drive like a drunk priest, but if she starved herself for a few days, when she finally broke the seal and let it out, it was worth it. She had planned for three days, just three days of starvation, then she could text Li and he would put aside whatever he was doing, as he promised. 

Whenever her mind went toward that genre of daydreaming, she yanked it back. The first time was going to be extra good. Her last boyfriend had had a sex drive that almost matched hers, but he only ever pleased himself, hardly paying attention to whether she was enjoying it, like she was a doll for his pleasure. She really, really hoped Li Jie would be different. She felt like he would be, since he said he would come at her command, no pun intended. 

Day three was a challenge, and her mood was down. Her mind felt scattered, all her tasks seemed more boring and pointless. In reality, if she thought about it she knew she was giving him some sort of test, but only a psychologist would be able to speak to that, so it would be pointless to psychoanalyze herself. That was what she said to justify her weird complexes. 

Saturday finally dawned. She woke up later, after her rough time getting to sleep, and her first thought was  _ Finally! I can jack off. _ But then she remembered she actually had to wait a whole twelve hours for that. To soothe the disappointment, she planned her day. 

She liked to jog on days off. She would do that. Then she would shower, and give herself a brazilian south just like her tita in the salon taught her, then eat brunch. She wanted to eat light today, but then she remembered Li Jie had a thing for fat. She would eat what she could, then do homework. Her usual Saturday didn’t go too differently than this, besides the brazillian. It was a self care kind of day, and what better self care was there than getting railed by a 5’11” Chinese boy with an appetite and grabbable hair? 

Most things went to plan. After her heavy brunch she did some pilates, just reconciling herself to the fact that she didn’t like heavy food, or being too full. Her frame didn’t accommodate it like he did, but the pilates just helped her feel better, she still had something to grab at the waist. Hours and hours of homework with the anticipation on her mind was difficult. She switched it out for chess practice, then surrendered. It was only seven pm, but damn did she want to text him. So she did. 

“hey li”

“Hey whats up” 

“hopefully your cock” 

“????????” 

“u promised.” There was a few moments of no response, until his bubble reappeared.

“OH. You should have clarified”

“I was pretty clear I think.” 

“Lemme shower. I’ll be over in like 30?” 

She didn’t even expect it to be that soon. After agreeing, she put down her phone and jumped up from her desk. Lingerie was already on. Room was clean. Sheets were fresh. She smelled herself. No scent, that was good. She pulled her hair out of the bun it was in and shook it out. All she could do now was put on a playlist and wait. 

The thirty minutes turned out to be more like forty five, and she went to a lot of effort not to call him. She opened the window. She walked around the room, did some stretches, danced sexy in the mirror, and sprayed perfume. There was nothing to do. No way in hell could she do homework, although she did make a note of the things she would do once her mind was clear. She watched her alarm clock tick over to seven thirty, and he still wasn’t here. Ugh. She laid on the floor and looked under her bed at the white wicker basket with a pink polka dotted blanket inside, covered with a wicker lid that held all her toys, lube, and condoms, ribbed, flavored, female, non-latex, etc., etc.. She expected Li to bring his own, but just in case. 

At last, as she was laying on the floor, listening to Doja Cat and wondering if she could watch something hot without ruining it, her phone buzzed. She leapt off the floor so fast she tripped, and picked up her phone. 

“Sorry I’m late, I had a situation. Can you come let me in?” 

“I’ll be right there” 

She put her phone in her pocket and looked in the mirror one last time. Hair had body. Body had body. Looking effervescent. She left. 

In the elevator to the ground floor, she tucked on her mask, and then walked the long hallway to the main entrance, where she could see him standing outside with his sweatshirt over his head and his black mask and hair covering his whole face again. Oh that sweet summer child in full black-ops mode outside the girls’ dorm, as if anyone cared. She pushed open the door and the perfectly comfortable December air rushed into the entry, where one person was dragging a suitcase to the side door, and the check-in girl was watching. 

“Finally!” Hiraya grabbed Li’s hand and pulled him inside, while he grabbed his hood to keep it on and looked behind him for anyone who might see. Impatient, she dragged him to the desk, where a girl popped her gum and looked him up and down. 

“I’m signing in my boyfriend.” Hiraya blurted out.

“I.D. card.” 

He produced it. They wrote down his name and student number, then handed it back and looked him up and down again. Hiraya narrowed her eyes. 

“Reason for visit?” 

“You don’t need that.” 

She pointed to the column on the sheet, and while no other entry had it filled out, it was there. Li Jie glanced at the door. 

“Um,” He slid his wrist out of Hiraya’s grip, but wrapped his hand into hers. “Recreation.” The receptionist shook her head and took out a bowl of condoms. Li patted his hoodie pocket. “Bye.” 

Then he pulled Hiraya into the dormroom doors and they approached the elevator. Li looked around, intrigued. 

“What?” She asked, tapping her foot and watching the numbers tick down to 0. 

“This place is neater than the guy dorms. Fewer stains and nicks.” She pulled him into the elevator. “Smells better too.” 

“Are you just going to look at the architecture while you’re here? If so, I can take you on a tour, there’s a whole lot of nice study rooms you can comment on.” 

Li laughed and turned towards her, looking down into her face with quiet lust. “Hmm. I think you could take me on an even better tour.” 

“My first option will probably last longer.” Hiraya muttered, and pulled him out of the elevator on the fourth floor. She always played hooky when the time came. 

They walked down the hall to her bedroom, and one girl from down the hall slipped out of her door with a box as they passed, first waving to Hiraya, then doing a double take at the odd sight of a guy in their hall. Hiraya and Li kept walking. 

She ticked the key in and shoved the door open with her shoulder. 

She had a scholarship and an uncle who worked on campus, so her single was nice. There were a few polaroids in glass suspension anchored to the wall, a piece of steel she used as a dry erase board, artwork from her dad, and one hanging succulent, which he immediately went over to and examined. She tried not to get annoyed and took a deep breath. He was enamored with her little aloe vera, and remarked on how well cared for it appeared. 

“The roots are really healthy.” 

She said nothing. He looked over. 

“What? I like plants. Just not as food.” He walked around her room. The gaming set up had all synchronized RGB with her speakers still playing Arctic Monkeys softly, her black and white binders were all neatly labelled in sharpie, a shelf of pens and pencils and headsets charging also sported a kalimba. Everything was neat, because she’d had forty five goddamn minutes to kill to get to this point. Finally, after walking slowly around her room, he came to a stop in front of her frustrated countenance. He smiled, in implacable intention.

“I like it.” 

“Me too.” 

“It’s really… cool.” 

“Huh?”

“I dunno.” He said, turning back to it. “Your room feels fancy.” 

She walked around him and looked out the window, leaning over the edge to see people scurrying back and forth and the sun starting to set, then inhaled deeply and felt calmness come over her and into her lungs. Just as she started to feel relaxed again, she felt hands on her waist, and Li came up behind her and leaned out of the window too. 

“Careful,” he muttered, grabbing her hips. “I don’t want you to fall.” 

“Too late.” She whispered, and turned around, looking straight into his distinctive features. She cupped his chin, and he leaned down and kissed her neck. 

Chills. 

She leaned back in the window and sat on the bed, inspecting her nails and listening to Often playing softly through the speakers. 

“So what took you, Li?” She asked, looking up at him, while he was looking out the window. He looked back when she said his name. 

“Hm? Oh, this is going to sound bad, but I ran out of condoms.” 

She shook her head with disdain, clicking her tongue. “I knew you were for the streets.”

He sat on the bed next to her and slid his fingers in between hers while she examined her cuticles. 

“I’m nooot.” He insisted, looking at their hands together in the sunset. “I gave them to Matt as a parting gift. My roommate, he dropped out.” 

“Hm…” Hiraya said, doubtfully. “Did you get more?” 

“Walgreens.” He reached his hand into his hoodie pocket and took out a box, which she tried not to look like she read, but definitely read Trojan Thintensity. “I didn’t want ‘em thin, but I didn’t have any other options.“

Hiraya shrugged. “Long as it works.” She was running numbers. She couldn’t help but wonder what he was packing, she’d get to see it soon, she hoped, but the suspense was in the back of her mind. He looked at her computer. 

“I just realized, I don’t actually know what you’re into. Besides toys and domination.” 

“I’m into you.” 

“Can I get into you?” 

He put the box on the bed and smoothed her cheekbone with his hand, gently touching her hair. She pushed his hood off and he blushed as his mess of tresses fell. “I took a shower, but I don't know how to use a hairdryer so I ended up with this mess.” His hair was dry, but tousled all over his head like he’d swirled a towel on it, which was probably exactly what he did. “I was gonna let it air dry, like usual, but Walgreens.” 

She wrapped her hands into the roots and tugged lighty. “It’s hot.” 

“Let me take this off, then.” He said, tugging gently on her silk blouse strap. She smiled and took his hand, slipping it under her shirt, while she pulled up on the side of the pink fabric. It slid off her abdomen and he pulled it gently over her head, laying it on the bed beside them. He visibly aroused, then put his hands under his hoodie and pulled it off with his shirt. 

She loved the thick arms and wanted them around her now. She leaned forward and put her hand on his lap, inviting him to kiss her. He did so, leaning just a little to cross that distance, and his lips were so gentle, and so honest, she could almost imagine she was kissing a soft flower. They travelled across the side of her face, down her jaw, to her neck, and he took a hesitant breath, before placing his mouth on her chest and kissing her once, earnestly. He pulled back and looked in her eyes, which were startled by intimacy, startled by love. 

“You ready?” 

“Yes.” She breathed, and went to him, chest now starting to pound a little as he caught her, taking her on his lap, and hoisting her forward. She leaned against his chest and kissed him over and over, feeling his member waking up against her thigh, and kissing harder and more desperately as she tried to wake it up. It made her feel so powerful, working him to a full erection. She leaned her pelvis against his and grabbed his waist, lacing one arm over his shoulder. She pushed her chest against his chest and he held her lower back so she wouldn’t fall, but started to stand. 

“Wait a minute.” 

He stood up and took off his sweatpants, leaving him only his red Calvins. She stood up and took off her jogging shorts, letting them fall to the floor and her lingerie be the only thing that covered a shred of skin. 

He started to breathe a little harder and they stared at one another, both so ready, but scared of scaring the other one. His eyes travelled down to her chest, and hers succumbed to staring at his package. 

“Look with your hands, not with your eyes.” 

“Promise you will too.” 

They both only needed to take a step in, before her hand could grab his bulge firmly and he took her breasts in both his palms. 

They were matching, by chance, a red lace set and red boxers. She rubbed up and down on his cock and he went weak at the knees for a minute. 

“Watch it.” He muttered. “Don’t make me bust before I get to show you what it really packs.” 

“Ugh.” She moaned, clenching her hand around it. “Show me now. Just make sure you pull out.” 

He picked her up and tossed her on the bed, and she squealed and reached out for him, but first, he took off his boxers. 

Holy mother of all things good. She licked her teeth and smiled, and he grinned smugly, climbing on top of her and placing one hand by her chest, but the other on her wrist. She could feel her pulse racing against his palm. 

“Safe word?” 

“‘Charming’.”

He laughed a little. “That’s cute.” But he grabbed her other wrist and shoved her arms to the bed. “I’m in charge.” 

She narrowed her eyes and wriggled with happiness. He began to bite her lightly and she wrapped her legs around his legs and fought back. He flinched and almost let her go instinctually. 

“Yes, Daddy.” She reassured, and he regained his resolve and restrained her, though kissing over her cleavage and collar lovingly. She tried to take him down and flip him, but he took his left hand off her wrist and started to rub it between her thighs, either side, getting closer and closer to her clitoris. 

“Be meaner.” She ordered. 

“Shut the fuck up.” He dug his nails into her inner thigh and shoved her wrist harder against the bed. It was nice, but he was holding himself back as a person like him would do, and somehow knew she trusted him. In a moment of desperation, wanting to escalate, she raised her hand and slapped him. 

“Charming?” She gasped. 

“No,” He rushed to reply. “If you hit me again, I’ll make you regret it.” 

She backhanded him so hard spit flew out of his mouth. “Make me regret it.” He put his hand on her throat, and with trembling strength, pushed on her trachea. 

“Charming.” She gasped, before he could ask. He let go immediately and pulled down her thong, wrestling it to her knees, rubbing his fingers in her vagina while it dripped. 

“Ungh!”

He pushed on her clit carefully, and she choked, grabbing his wrist and digging her nails into it. He let go and smacked her, getting more mouth than cheek, but it stung. 

“Fuck you.” She muttered. 

“I’m gonna make you scream.” 

“Do it already, pussy.” 

He raised his hips, then looked at her, completely serious, fully out of character. She nodded and grabbed his side, taking a breath to prepare. He slipped it in her all at once. 

Instantly, her thighs tightened and her back arched, taking him in tremblingly, with unexpected surprise. This motherfucker was girthy. She bit her lip and tried to ride it out, doing little oscillations with her hips to get used to him, but then once she thought she was used to him, he slipped the rest of it in and she gasped. He grabbed her shoulder and pinned her down. 

“Are you good?” 

“Shut up and ride me!” 

He pounded her against the bed and she arched like a gymnast, her hand flying up to grab his shoulder, her nails digging so hard into the meat she thought she might draw blood. He planted his feet in the mattress and shoved himself deep in her gut, and she thought she might cum then and there. That would be insane. Instead, she cried out and took her other hand to his neck, lifting and holding herself off the bed in a tense state of euphoria, panting. 

“You okay?” 

“Fuck me, batang!” 

“Oh, we’re doing our other languages?” He dropped his voice and spoke in her ear. “求求我寶貝.” 

“Harder!” She screamed, and he thrust her against her mattress, hard enough that her fitted sheet came loose. She bounced up and down underneath him, sweat dripping over her torso, her bra strap coming loose and falling off her shoulder. His thick arm was by her neck, restraining her when he flung her back with his thrust, and the other was gripping her torso. She squeezed his ass and shoved herself back at him, her pelvis crashing into his, hammering her clit, while he breathlessly and smugly watched her grimace and roll her eyes back as the boxspring shifted and squeaked. 

Every time he hit her wall with the bed frame he grunted, and every time he grunted, her pulse soared and her pussy flexed. She made a long, loud sound between a moan and a scream as he palmed her ass and jerked his hips forward and back as quickly as he could, begging for even more friction in her tight vagina. 

“不要暨!” 

“What the fuck does that mean?” She gasped as she grabbed his bicep and he slammed his hand against the wall, groaning gutterally. 

“Don’t cum until I--ungh! Don’t you dare cum until I tell you to.” 

She gasped for air. “I can’t help it, Daddy, you’re so fucking strong.” 

“Don’t!” 

“I’m always obedient, but--” 

“You understand me, Hiraya? 不要暨.” 

She caught her breath and went still, her legs trembling as he rammed her against the pillows with his hand on the wall and one on her hip, slick with sweat, abs clenched for his life. She felt it, it was almost inevitable, then she saw him grimace and let out a moan. 

She screamed and tried to hurt him, scratching at his back, and clawing at his sides. “I have to!” Her pulsing vagina was engorged with rushing blood, stimulation was spreading out from between her legs to numb her thighs, weaken her abs, and strain her heart. “I’m about to explode!” She wrapped her arms around his rocking body and took her bra off, letting her bare breasts and hard nipples push against his. He gasped and almost fell. She felt him almost have to pull out a second, then he got back in control and put his face against her collar, biting her and sucking on her while he pounded her pussy and she clawed at his spine, desperate. 

“求求我.” 

“Huh?” She sputtered, dripping at the sound of his strained voice.

“Beg me.”

“Fuck me, fuck me, Li!” She managed to utter while bouncing up and down on her back.

“What did you say?” He muttered, too focused on pounding her to even raise his face from hers. 

“PLEASE!!” 

He pushed himself balls deep in her and she silently shouted, all breath stopped by the fulmination. The bed soaked, ejaculate leaking all around his cock as he pulled out and she was frozen there for a few seconds more, eyes wide, but seeing only stars as her flexed feet shook and she squirted out clear fluid. Li closed his eyes, catching his breath and taking his shaking hand off the wall while she finished, holding on to his chest. When it was done, he sat back on his heels while his pulsing member calmed down. 

Hiraya put her hand to her stomach and curled onto her side with a moan. 

“Holy hell, Li Jie.” 

He rubbed his hand down his thigh and looked down at himself, still sporting a raging boner. “I’m gonna be hard all night.” 

She sat up and absentmindedly reached for his cock, still slimy. She fonded it in her hand and he closed his eyes, taking a few deep breaths while she jacked him off, precome dripping over her hand until at last, he busted, and caught it in the duvet hurriedly. 

They both took a moment, Hiraya to wipe her hand across the bed, then Li, to kiss her lovingly, then they laid down on the loose sheets exhausted and looked at each other, Li with his back to the wall. 

“I’m in love with you.” He whispered. 

“I know.” She whispered back. “I’m in love with you too.” 

“What do we do?” He asked, looking down her tired body and back up to her face. “I never want to be away from you.” 

“Then don’t leave.” She replied. “I’m not going anywhere.” 

“My mom is expecting me tonig-” He looked over her shoulder and his eyes went wide. 

“What? What is it?’ She asked, turning over, almost frightened she’d had her stream on or something. But it was just Kali Uchis and her screen saver. Then she looked where he was looking. The window was still open, and the sunset was streaming in with cool air. 

“Do you think-” 

“Someone heard us?” 

“Surely not, right?” Hiraya got up, stumbled initially on weak legs, which made Li laugh, but caught herself on the window sill and looked down. He quickly got up and grabbed her waist, but looked down too. 

At the foot of the window, a few people had gathered beneath the room, some of them amused parents who were moving their students out late, some of them students who were going to stay here over winter break. Some had their phones out, but others were just laughing and speaking to one another. One of them spotted Li and Hiraya in the window, and then they all looked up at once, and the two of them ducked down behind the wall, wide eyed. 

“Uh, they don’t know what room this is, right?” 

“They can’t.” 

“So, we just put our masks on and we’re good right?” 

“For sure.” 

“Play it cool.” 

They did play it cool, all the way out of the building’s back door to Li’s car which was already packed with his winter clothing to go home for a month. Hiraya hugged him one last time and pouted. 

“You really have to go?” 

“I always go home for Christmas break, my mom gets lonely if I don’t.” 

“But I’ll miss you.” She mumbled, holding on to his chest as he kissed her head. 

“I’ll miss you too. I’m gonna visit you January New Years, and I’ll call you all day on Christmas.” 

“You promise?” 

“I promise.” 

Hiraya didn’t say anything as she watched him get in the car, and stood in the lot waving until he was far out of sight. He had better come back on January first. 


	7. Twelfth Night, January 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Li only visited campus to hang out with her after streaming, but his... situation is hard for them both to ignore. Hiraya and Li do justice to the term 'switch' as they learn how to please each other.

Li knocked on Hiraya’s dorm room door and hid a burp. He ate way too much. He ate so much he almost got in a wreck on the way over here because he was so tired. As he drove, his stomach had ached with blissful pain, sore all the way around the middle because of how stuffed he was. Hiraya knew he over-ate for money, but she’d never seen him on a Tuesday night either, so he was trying to be normal so she wouldn’t ask about it. But goddamn was that difficult with the aching that was going on inside his engorged stomach. 

Hiraya opened the door finally, and threw her arms around him. 

“Ooh-” He grunted, hugging her back, but backing up a few steps. 

“Li! I’m so glad to see you.” She kissed his mask and he stepped into her room and took it off, trying not to stumble, though he was off balance. She closed the door behind him and looked around. She’d changed her RGB colors to yellow and white, and gently flickering fairy lights decorated the perimeter of her ceiling. Intricate, three dimensional paper snowflakes hung in the window, and the silver whiteboard normally covered in tasks and assignments simply read: “Winter Break!” in black, with a moon next to it. 

“Why the moon?” He asked, pointing. She turned and caught sight of her board. 

“The solstice was on the twenty first. Shortest day of the year, kinda important to my Dad. Don’t ask me why, I’m barely from Sulawesi.” 

Li shrugged. “I just spent four hours celebrating Twelfth Night and I’m still not clear on who Jesus is. Your moon thing is cuter, though.” He sat on her bed and she turned down her music, bouncing over to him and plopping down next to him. “I’ve missed you all weekend since New Years. Sorry I couldn’t stay until midnight.” 

“I know you promised your mom, it’s fine. It’s not even real New Year's anyway.” He tried not to cringe as his belly rumbled quietly. She glanced down at it but made no comment, simply getting up and reaching into her mini fridge. She took out two eggnog lattes from starbucks and handed him one. “I know it’s not much, but I got us these to celebrate winter. I remember you said you used to really like eggnog, so this was cheap and easy.” She laughed, and handed him one, which he took with trepidation. He did not expect to come here and eat more. He had calmed his stomach with rubbing in the car, but putting more into it might undo all that. He glanced out the window at the dark campus with distant white lights and lowered the cup. She cocked her head. “What?” 

“Nothing, thank you for the coffee.” 

She sat on her bed and sipped hers, watching him from out of the corner of her eye, while he raised the cup to his mouth, but hesitated. At even the prospect of drinking something, his stomach gurgled. She glanced at it again. 

“Are you okay?” 

“Um, sort of.” He began, blushing. 

“Did you do your stream today?” He tugged on his hoodie and nodded. “So I’m guessing this is why you don’t want coffee.” He nodded again and set the cup on her bedside table. 

“Actually, smelling it kind of makes me sick.” He put a hand into his hoodie pocket and placed his palm against the firm stomach in there. It bulged over the waistband of his sweatpants and pushed the elastic down to his thighs. Hiraya’s coffee smell stayed in his nose and he felt it bubble anxiously against his hand, warning him not to consume anything else. Hiraya looked at him skeptically, scrutinizing his frame while he tried to hunch over and hide the obvious distension in his middle despite his hoodie. 

“Take your sweatshirt off.” She ordered, putting down her coffee and narrowing her eyes. 

“I’m actually kind of cold…” 

“Uh uh. No, take it off.” 

“Why?” He whined, growing nervous. 

“I want to see something. Just take it off.” 

Reluctantly, he pulled his arms into his shirt and pulled his chin into the inside, lifting it off his torso and dropping it to the bed, readjusting his oversized t-shirt over the pale, massive belly over his thighs. He looked over at her with dread. 

Her eyes were wide, and she was staring at his gut. He was pretty proud of it. Firm, round, packed with food and no air. God, it hurt, but also it felt amazing. 

“Wow, baby. You take your streams seriously.” 

“Yeah,” He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess you could say so.” He placed a hand over his girth and burped a bit, he couldn’t help it. His belly was so swollen and full of food. “Ouch.” 

“Awe,” Hiraya said softly, looking back up at his face. “Did you eat too much?” 

“Yeah.” He nodded. “But I’m fine.” 

“Did you eat everything you planned to when you started?” 

“Yup.” He eyed her skeptically. 

“Did you make money?” 

“Like two hundred dollars.” 

“Wow.” Was all she said, and then her eyes fell back from his face to his waist, burdened with a few pounds of Christmas food. “What all did you eat?” 

He couldn’t tell, but he was starting to ask himself, just based off the tone of her voice and the way she inclined her whole body toward him, was Hiraya wet right now? 

“Um, well, there are a couple things you always have at twelfth night. There are two kinds of cake, fresh fruit, chocolate usually. I probably had about three, three and a half servings of everything.” 

“Does it hurt?” She asked it almost like she was seducing him. 

“Uh, yeah. But the wine helps.” 

She flinched back. “Are you drunk?” He shook his head. “Tipsy?” He shook his head again. She nodded and smiled a little, then leaned forward and kissed him. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but he was also not about to stop it. He turned toward her on the bed, and she put her arms on his shoulders, lazily putting her fingers in his hair. 

Suddenly, she took a handful of it in her grip and yanked. His head jerked back and his eyes snapped open from kissing her. 

“Hiraya?” 

She slowly pulled her legs up on the bed, kicking off her house shoes, and leaned toward him. 

“You’re not drunk, you’re not tipsy, and you look submissive.” She licked her teeth and looked at him like she wanted to eat him alive. He immediately drew a line between their kinks. She liked him weak and in pain, and he liked himself weak and in pain, just in a nontraditional sense. He took off his shoes and nodded. “You keep nodding like you don’t have a voice.” She mumbled, placing her mouth on his and biting his lip. “Seems like you need someone to draw it out of you.” He smiled and nodded again, while she started rubbing on his belly, and tucking her fingers under it to his cock to gauge response. The first time her fingernails brushed his bulge, he felt blood rush to his face. She grinned and leaned him back on the bed slowly, working her hands around his belly and straddling him as he pulled his legs onto her covers. 

“Did baby eat too much?” She murmured, sliding her graceful fingers over the bulge of his full gut, and also over the secondary bulge of his forming cock. “Did baby eat too much and give himself a tummy ache? Aweee.” 

He sighed as she massaged the underbelly, which was soft with fat, but not extra room. Hiraya took off her shirt and he stared at her, straddling him against the pale fairy lights on her ceiling, her pushed up breasts forming perfect arches above her abs. 

She leaned down over his stomach, placing her hands either side of his face so she didn’t push on it, and put her face down next to his ear. 

“I’m gonna make you scream.” She whispered, and a chill went down Li’s spine. She lowered herself down just a bit and her cleavage pushed against his bulging stomach, successfully working him to full hardness. He was proud of his seven inch, although in high school he found that despite what porn said, girls found it more intimidating than arousing. Such was not the case with Hiraya, who upon seeing him go erect, bit salivated and disappeared below his belly. He caught his breath as she put his dick in her mouth, groaning as she did it. 

He wanted it, he wanted her so bad, but his stomach was revolting. The hard-on was taking blood flow somewhere else, other than his enormous stomach and dreading digestive system, and it was not responding well. It cramped and he moaned, both at the feeling inside him and the sensation of Hiraya’s tongue cupping his shaft. 

“B-baby,” He uttered, elated, but in mild agony. 

“Stuttering already?” Hiraya asked, crawling back over him to his pained expression. “What?” 

“My- my stomach.” 

She grinned deviously. “Hurts that bad, huh?” He nodded, squeezing his eyes shut as a rippling bubble worked up from his lower belly. It was hard to digest food and maintain a full erection, and quitting halfway through half a pound of chocolate was giving him pain and some swelling, which he felt with his hand when he cupped his lower belly. 

“Oh-h-h.” He breathed shallow as Hiraya took off her shorts and slowly slipped her pussy over his member like an antidote. Instantly, his mind was elsewhere. 

“You little bitch.” She grabbed his shoulder and undulated on his dick, each tremble going through him also going through her as they took a moment to close their eyes and please themselves. “You’re a slut, Li Jie, but you’re my slut. Here,” She took the coffee cup off her bedside table and handed it to him. “Drink this.” 

She pulled him up and shoved a pillow behind him for support. She sat on his lap and rocked on his dick while he held the cup in one shaking, disbelieving hand. 

“I can’t.” He replied, staring at her, more in love than he thought he’d ever been. 

“I’m sorry, what did you just say?” 

“I-I’m sorry I’m just so full.” 

“What are you?” 

“Full.” 

“Not that, the other thing. Who I made you.” 

He swallowed, for the first time, degrading himself in front of a girl. He’d never been treated like this before, and it was doing things to him he didn’t want to say out loud. “A slut.” 

“And whose slut are you?” 

“Yours.” 

“So when I say drink,” she murmured, leaning close to him and he couldn’t take the pressure in his chest as her breasts pushed against his upper belly and her racy gaze stared up at him. “I think you should fuckin’ drink. I’ll make you regret not obeying me.” 

Quivering, he took the cup to his mouth and sipped. It was good eggnog, but nothing would really be considered good when your stomach was in the state his was in. It panged as she rode him up and down, jiggling his stomach with what jiggle it had every time she came down hard and fast, holding his shoulders while he struggled to take sips of eggnog. 

The cake in his belly soaked up the coffee, and he felt his stomach distending as she wound him up to the brink of orgasm, which he was shockingly close to. He didn’t get ordered ordinarily, and the fresh flavor of Hiraya’s top sex was intoxicatingly good. He wanted to bust, and as soon as his face got that red, strained look to it and he started to breathe hard, Hiraya grabbed his throat. He looked at her in desperation, and she looked back with cold unflinching domination, and said one word. 

“No.” 

“Please, baby.” He whispered, leaning back against the pillows as his racing heart pushed him to release, the precum soaking them both and dripping to the bed. 

“Call me by my name or call me Mommy.” 

“Oh god.” He gasped, and she cackled and kissed his quivering mouth as she bounced her ass up and down on his volatile cock, her stomach and his stomach touching one another. He groaned and all of a sudden belched, catching them both my surprise as his stomach gurgled aggressively, and Hiraya’s eyes went wide as she felt the bubbles of severe indigestion against her. 

“Baby doesn’t feel good, does he?” She crooned, shoving her hand against his gut sadistically as he cried out and grabbed her arm. He forgot he was the bottom for a second and just wanted her to stop. She flinched with surprise, and he felt her ejaculate a little. He pulled her close by her bicep, still humping her back, and murmured into her ear, capitalizing on her moment of paralysis. 

“Don’t forget who can really make you suffer.” Briefly flustered, she looked at him doe eyed, and he asked her. “Who is it?” 

“Li.” She whispered. He smiled and let her go, closing his eyes and taking another sip of coffee as his stomach expanded and erupted with more gurgling. Hiraya got back to her senses and smirked, not wanting to be impressed with her boyfriend, but irresistibly enamored. 

She humped him against her pillows, panting hard and trying not to cum herself, as Li drank coffee and blew up like a basketball. He was in euphoria, swelling his waistline with every gulp of iced coffee, tipping over the edge of ejaculation degree by degree, whining while Hiraya manipulated his dick better than he could. 

He was getting punches of reflux when he felt the pressure building below his waist start to get to an extremely critical level. He couldn’t hold it in anymore, physically, no matter how in control he wanted to be in his mind. 

“F-Fuck.” He muttered. “Mommy I have to pull out.” 

“No you don’t.” She replied, relentlessly grinding on him and making his raging boner tighter with arousal. 

“I do, I swear I do, please.” 

“No you don’t, you belong to me.” 

“Are you on the pill?” 

“No. I have my period next week.” 

“Does that-- So I-- Can I nut in you?” 

“You may.” 

“Uungh!” The prospect of not pulling out almost made him bust on the spot, but he grabbed her torso and squeezed his eyes shut. “H-Hiraya, really though, I need to finish.” 

“You need to obey me.” 

“I want to be obedient, but--” 

“Who’s dick is this?” 

“Yours.” 

She rode him harder, making him gasp for breath and go tense from head to toe. 

“Who am I?”

“M-Mommy-- Aaugh!”

She slammed him against the pillows and he grabbed her waist tightly, unintentionally digging her fingers into her ribs as she tortured him. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t exploded yet. He couldn’t believe she could still work him harder. She was a fucking magician. 

“Who am I?” 

“Hiraya I can’t--” 

“Can’t what? Can’t speak? Who am I?” She snapped. He screamed. She lost her grip and fell forward as he shot semen inside her like a .22 and shook from the waist out as he finally released the pain and the pressure. She lost her breath at the sensation and laid on top of him until it stopped coming. 

She got off him and he wiped his tears, laughing with bliss as she wiped her sweat and relaxed against the pillows by his side. 

“You can marry me whenever you like, by the way.” He said, turning toward her tired face and pulling himself closer to her. 

“Oedipus complex much.” She replied, reaching between his legs and picking up his balls. “I think I emptied you.” 

“In all that time you wouldn’t let me cum I think it’s possible.” 

“Awe, poor baby.” 

“Eh, gimme five minutes and we’ll be back to it.” He closed his eyes and breathed evenly as he could, still feeling the jitters of orgasm. 

“I don’t think you will,” Hiraya said in a warning tone. “Look at your stomach, babe.” 

He opened his eyes and looked down at his waist, and it was all he could do not to gasp. His belly had been shaken by vigorous sex and filled with cake and coffee, and was huge. He touched the round side of it, almost getting hard again, although that felt nearly impossible. 

“What does it feel like?” Hiraya murmured. 

“It feels like I swallowed a big stone, and now it’s rolling around. This one’s pretty solid.” He rubbed his hand across the stretched dome of his stomach, glancing affectionately at the stretch marks by his hips. 

“This one?” Breathed Hiraya, reaching out to touch it, fascinated as well. “You really do this every Tuesday night?” 

“No, not this much. But today was a holiday and I had a bunch of holiday food, so I decided to do something special.” 

She placed her hand against his lower right part of his stomach and felt it move forcefully, shocking him enough that he caught his breath and pinched his face. 

“You do it because you like it, right?” She asked hurriedly, rubbing the bulbous section of his belly and looked up at his sweaty face. “You’re not harming yourself?” 

“Whether or not I’m harming myself remains to be seen, but I do like it. This feels good in an incomprehensible way.” 

She slowly leaned off the pillows and sat in front of him, her knees over his, and started pushing her hands into his belly. 

“Babe, don’t do that.” He grunted, gritting his teeth against the way the muscles around his stomach fought back. 

“Well what do you want me to do?” 

“You got over there in the first place!” He rubbed his hand over a painful cramp across the left side of his bulbous belly going from his kidney to his navel. She mimicked it on his right side and he visibly relaxed. 

From that point forward, she was a mirror of whatever he did. If he rubbed the upper belly, she rubbed the lower belly in the same spot. If he pushed his fingers back and forth around a bubble on his right, she did the same on his left. Every once in a while, they would hit a perfect rhythm and he would moan. She put both hands into the fat over his stomach and moved the load around, her strong hands on his suffering gut making him go places in his mind he’d never been before. He wanted to save that moment, when she worked a burp out of him, or when his stomach started gurgling again and she would chase the rumbles all around his dome of a stomach. When he would seize up with pain as the constriction around that overstuffed balloon of an organ made stabbing sensations go into his tummy. She would rub her hands across that seizing part until pins and needles dissipated the pain and distributed the pressure. 

All that massaging and kissing and gentle kneading on his belly was helping blood return from his member to his lower stomach, and helping him digest. The pain of overdistension declined and the pain of digestion rose, so he took Hiraya’s shoulder and laid her down with his arm behind her head so his guts could work alone, finally able to get the food through it’s tract. He shifted uncomfortably and laid an arm across his belly. 

“Can you spend the night?” She asked sleepily, closing her eyes.

“I don’t see why not.” He murmured, settling into the pile of pillows while the low burbles of digestion rumbled in him. Hiraya smiled and curled up against his side while he held her gently and stared at her ceiling, glowing with RBG, fairy lights, and the streetlights outside the window. His tight guts would be better by tomorrow night. Knowing this, he fell asleep next to her gradually, letting her sighs and the steady wave of gold and white light lull him away.


End file.
